THE BANEFUL EFFECTS OF DEVIATION

since tradition in western countries did not require women to segregate themselves from men and live in seclusion, they came out of their homes and began working in offices and factories. Gradually, the traditional pattern of living began to change. Men were no longer the sole breadwinners: women had begun to share that responsibility. With economic independence came the realization in women that they should “break out of the shackles forged for them by men” to make new and independent lives for themselves. This trend in thinking eventually paved the way for the women’s liberation movement. Since feminism was given its first impetus by the industrial revolution, “women’s lib” began in those countries where industrialization had first made its appearance. The first noteworthy book to demand equal rights for women was published in London in 1792. Authored by Mary Wollstonecraft, it was entitled, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The industrial revolution came later to America and that is why the women’s liberation movement did not begin there until the nineteenth century. With the progress of the industrial revolution, women’s liberation gained momentum, reaching its zenith in the 20th century. The upholders of this movement maintained that the cause of the difference existing between men and women in societies with ancient traditions lay not in nature but in a manmade social framework. Their contention was that a woman could do anything that a man could do, but that outdated social customs prevented her from coming into her own. They held that, once given the opportunity to demonstrate her capabilities, a woman would be able to work shoulder to shoulder with men in every walk of life. In no respect would she lag behind. This movement is now over two hundred years old and, in modem developed countries, it has been so successful that neither the law nor tradition now places the slightest obstacle in the path of women who wish to step into the shoes of men. Yet women still lag far behind men, there being very few instances of their having actually placed themselves on an equal footing with them. Encyclopaedia Britannica has this to say on the subject of women in modern society: In the economic sphere women who work outside the home are heavily concentrated in the lowest paying work and that having the lowest status. Women also earn less than men in the same kinds of jobs. The median pay of women workers in the U.S. was 60 percent that of men in 1982. In Japan the percentage of average pay was 55. Politically, women are greatly underrepresented in national and local government and in political parties.21 Today the social boundaries set by time-honored conventions have broken down, and all countries now have laws favoring equality of the sexes. Yet modern woman still finds herself on a lower rung than man, not having been able to achieve equal status in any of the economically or professionally important areas of modern living. This state of affairs would appear to indicate that, contrary to the women’s libbers’ way of thinking, social conditioning cannot be blamed for the centuries-old difference in the status of men and women. If this had been so, surely by the end of the 20th century women would have been enjoying an