Our First Fifty Years Instead of blaming men for their own failures, or giving feminists undeserved credit, more and more women recognize that they control their own careers.
Laws barring discrimination against women are on the books and enforced.
All those gains clearly belie the image of women as victims struggling against discrimination in the workplace. The countless women who have started their own businesses, won elective office, and made it to the top of their professions are not victims. They are evidence of just how far American women have come and how far they are going. There are different kinds of success, of course, and every woman has her own definition of it. Decisions to enter previously male-dominated fields of education and employment, to marry and bear children later in life, to join the work force, and to leave the work force to raise children have all had an enormous effect on whether women can achieve total parity with men.