UNNATURAL EQUALITY

beginning training. And politically, women were barely visible: in 1975, only one in ten statewide elected officials and state legislators were women; and, at the national level, only 4 percent of the members of congress were women. During the next two decades, from 1970 through 1990, all of these indicators of women’s status changed, most rather dramatically, and women are now visible if not prominent in virtually every walk of life in the United States.20 • Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1982, and as of 1990 12.5 percent of all U.S. federal judges, and more than 8 percent of the judges on state benches, were women. • In 1984, Representative Geraldine Ferraro, a wife and mother, was the Democratic Party’s Vice Presidential candidate and the first woman in American history to run on a presidential ticket. • In 1991, 17 percent of all elected mayors were women, up from just 1 percent in 1971. During the same period the number of statewide elected officials and legislators doubled, from 10 percent to just under 20 percent. At the national level progress has been slower: the proportion of female members of congress went up from 4 percent in 1975 to 10 percent in 1994. • In 1991, 20 percent of then-President Bush’s Senate confirmed appointments — that is, the higher-ranking appointments — were women, up from18 percent in 1977 under thenPresident Jimmy Carter. President William Clinton’s cabinet is peppered with women — as of September 1993, Attorney General Janet Reno, Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary, and Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala were in the Cabinet proper. Laura D’Andrea Tyson was Chairman of the prestigious Council of Economic Advisers, Sheila Widnall was Secretary of the Air Force, Dr. Joycelyn Elders was U.S. Surgeon General, and the heads of the Peace Corps, the Environmental Protection Agency and Commodity Futures Trading Commission were women. One out of the five governors on the Federal Reserve Board and one out of the four commissioners on the U.S. International Trade Commission are women. There are about ten women in top posts within the Executive Office of the President, and there are more then 25 women under-secretaries in the various government departments or ministries. • Women have also broken into the front ranks of the media, with Connie Chung holding a prized anchor position on the evening news for one of the three major commercial television networks and scores more women in the position of network reporters, and even more women anchoring and reporting for local news stations, not to mention hosting some of the most popular talk and variety shows. • In 1989, a survey of ‘Fortune 500’ companies found that women made up 12.7 percent of corporate board membership, up from a single digit figure in 1970. And, businesses owned by women soared in the decade 1977-1978, from 7.1 to 30 percent of all business. • In education, where women have historically lagged behind men, especially in post-