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Last winter, as Barack Obama's transition team developed a stimulus package to jumpstart the U.S economy, feminist economists and historians organized petitions, e-mails, and meetings to call attention to women's needs. Their activism was unprecedented; I have not seen the like during all my time in the nation's capital. While it bears some resemblance to the work of academic women around welfare reform in the early 1990s, this mobilization was more spontaneous, more rapid, and probably less visible to the public. It also faded fairly quickly. The mobilization targeted the transition team, largely through e-mail petitions. Although feminists wrote op-eds and letters to the editor, there were no press conferences or ads in the New York Times , as there had been during the longer welfare reform campaign. Arguably, though, this mobilization was more successful in its outcome.

Discussion begins with a look at some of the labor market gains women have made in the US, noting that despite this, women still experience more poverty than men. The impact of the current economic crisis on women is then examined, before looking at how women will fare under the Obama administration's stimulus package. D. Edelman. Adapted from the source document.

Introduces the focus of the issue, which is a desire to understand the sources of women's poverty & low earnings, and to recommend changes in public policy that can improve the incomes & well-being of women & their families. Adapted from the source document.

The failure of highly educated women to stay in the labor market represents a wasted societal investment. Despite publicity suggesting that educated mothers are increasingly staying home, the long-term trend is toward greater work effort by all mothers, especially highly educated ones. Policy measures can address the reasons some women do drop out by making it more possible for professionals, as well as other workers, to combine work and family. In addition, the double standard in parenting needs to be attacked so that, eventually, men are just as likely as women to take care of children at the same level of intensity and women's and men's labor force participation patterns will look even more similar than they do today.

The failure of highly educated women to stay in the labor market represents a wasted societal investment. Despite publicity suggesting that educated mothers are increasingly staying home, the long-term trend is toward greater work effort by all mothers, especially highly educated ones. Policy measures can address the reasons some women do drop out by making it more possible for professionals, as well as other workers, to combine work & family. In addition, the double standard in parenting needs to be attacked so that, eventually, men are just as likely as women to take care of children at the same level of intensity & women's & men's labor force participation patterns will look even more similar than they do today. 14 References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2004 The American Academy of Political and Social Science.]