The 10 Cities With the Greatest and Least Sex Equality

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I'm a female college graduate from Mobile, AL, and I have to say these results are interesting, but don't really say much.
For one thing, the 2 largest private employers in Mobile are Austal and ST Aerospace, which are shipbuilding and aircraft maintenance companies, respectively. Not saying that females cannot succeed as mechanics, welders, engineers, etc., but a majority of these jobs are filled by males.
Also, since Mobile is a heavily industrial city--shipping, manufacturing, aerospace, chemicals, etc.--a lot of educated females end up moving away to pursue their careers while males stay around.
It also doesn't account for women who CHOOSE to be a stay-at-home mother or work in some volunteer or low-paying job because they ENJOY it. While I don't doubt there is SOME inequality in Mobile and other cities, I know plenty of female attorneys, doctors, editors, managers, etc. who fill important positions and have quality education and wages. Right now, I actually earn more than my husband, though once he completes his master's degree, that will change.

CM of AL 5:47PM May 19, 2011

No legislation yet has closed the gender wage gap — not the 1963 Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, not Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, not the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, not the 1991 amendments to Title VII, not affirmative action (which has benefited mostly white women, the group most vocal about the wage gap), not diversity, not the countless state and local laws and regulations, not the horde of overseers at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, not the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.... Nor will a "paycheck fairness" law work.
That's because pay-equity advocates, at no small financial cost to taxpayers and the economy, continue to overlook the effects of this female AND male behavior:
Despite the 40-year-old demand for women's equal pay, millions of wives still choose to have no pay at all. In fact, according to Dr. Scott Haltzman, author of "The Secrets of Happily Married Women," stay-at-home wives, including the childless who represent an estimated 10 percent, constitute a growing niche. "In the past few years,” he says in a CNN report at http://tinyurl.com/6reowj, “many women who are well educated and trained for career tracks have decided instead to stay at home.” (“Census Bureau data show that 5.6 million mothers stayed home with their children in 2005, about 1.2 million more than did so a decade earlier....” at http://tinyurl.com/qqkaka. If indeed more women are staying at home, perhaps it's because feminists and the media have told women for years that female workers are paid less than men in the same jobs — so why bother working if they're going to be penalized and humiliated for being a woman.)
As full-time mothers or homemakers, stay-at-home wives earn zero. How can they afford to do this while in many cases living in luxury? Because they're supported by their husband, an “employer” who pays them to stay at home.
Both feminists and the media ignore what this obviously implies: If millions of wives are able to accept no wages and live as well as their husbands, millions of other wives are able to accept low wages, refuse overtime and promotions, work part-time instead of full-time (“According to a 2009 UK study by Cristina Odone for the Centre for Policy Studies, only 12 per cent of the 4,690 women surveyed wanted to work full time.” http://bit.ly/ihc0tl), take more unpaid days off, avoid uncomfortable wage-bargaining (http://tinyurl.com/45ecy7p) — all of which lower women's average pay. They are able to make these choices because they are supported, or anticipate being supported, by a husband who must earn more than if he'd chosen never to marry. (Still, even many men who shun marriage, unlike women, feel their self worth is tied to their net worth.) This is how MEN help create the wage gap. If the roles were reversed so that men raised the children and women raised the income, men would average lower pay than women.
See “A Response to the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act” at http://tinyurl.com/pvbrcu

MaleMatters of MI 6:01PM May 13, 2011