many more conventional occupations can earn in a week (Weeks, 1989, p. 65). The market model of social behavior, thus, supplies a good female sexual services for a price, while moral standards hold that such services are invaluable (Blau, 1967, p. 63). Society's diminution of women through prostitution, thus, devalues the very moral values that are assumed to underlie society. Prostitution is used as an example of the outcomes of the societal subordination of women. Certainly, prostitution is an extreme example, but the principle is similar where women are shunted into any low status job.
Some feminist theorists object to the assessment of sexual domination within an economic context. Barry (1979, p. 9) held that,
. . when economic power is defined as the causal variable, the sex dimensions of power usually remain unidentified and unchallenged. Consequently, economic analysis has often functioned to undermine the feminist critique of sexual domination . . . . Feminist analysis of sexual power is often modified to make it fit into an economic analysis which defines economic analysis as the primary instrument of female oppression" (Barry, 1979, p. 9).
Barry (1979, p. 10) contended further that, by "appearing to critique the conditions which lead to prostitution," an economic analysis of the issue tend to "obscure recognition of sexual domination, which is the first cause of sexual power." This point is also relevant to the subordination of women in society generally, because the subordination of women diminishes the achievement potential of women.
An important beginning point in the extension of gender equality is the educational system, for it is through education that women receive the tools necessary to compete on an equal basis with men in society. Title IX of the Education Act Amendments of 1972 provided the basis for an extensive attack on gender based discrimination in education throughout the United Stat...