ertain job categories (Humphrey, 1977, p. 11).
Some improvements in the plight of women in the workplace were made between the first EEOC study in 1966 and the second in 1975, but it was found that women were still accorded somewhat different treatment than white male workers. Women showed a marked shift from blue-collar to white-collar jobs, and within the white-collar field, only office/clerical jobs declined as a percent of all jobs. Changes in the occupational distribution patterns for white men and all women moved in the same general direction, but women continued to have lower occupational distribution rates than those white males in jobs not traditionally held by women. Nearly 34 percent of all female employment in 1975 was in traditionally non-female jobs, compared to nearly 58 percent of the total workforce and about 74 percent of all white male employment (Humphrey, 1977, p. 12).
Employment has a special place in the effort to achieve legal equality between men and women because it is bound with the need for economic independence and security. More than half the women in America between 18 and 64 were employed full-time by 1974. Nearly half of all married women now work, and one out of ten women workers is head of a family. Discrimination takes place in both the public and private sectors, and laws have been passed to deal with each. The government exists at three levels--federal, state, and local--and at all levels government has a history of bias against women workers, reflecting the traditional biases of society at large. Such biases derive from certain assumptions made by society at large, such as that women are dependent on men, that their proper role is homemaker, and that women who do work have a weak attachment to the work force. It is also believed that women have a fragility and limited abilities that require special "protections" in the workplace. The kinds of discrimination found in public service ar...