All right, SdlH, I loved it when you said: It is rooted in biology. But it is statistical. Take the statement "men are taller than women". It is only true in a statistical sense.

I'm one of those women that is taller than the average U.S. male; I'm also smarter spatially and technologically than most U.S. males, and my spatial skills are better than my verbal skills, unlike most women. I break a lot of statistical trends and like people who know statistical truth ≠ individual truth.

However, I do take a little exception to: The best way for women to keep their careers on the front burner is for them to marry men who are happy to put their careers on the back burner.

I'm the primary breadwinner in my household. I've been in two marriages (the second one is strong) and in neither one have we ever been able to have one person earn enough to cover the bills for both. It's particularly difficult with insurance and medical costs as high as they are. The only people I know who manage a one-paycheck, two-person household successfully are making over six figures. The rest of us are scrambling to make ends meet. Today I turned down a visit to a friend after work because we can't afford to fill my gas tank again before I get paid, 11 days from now.

Rambler made an excellent point with: In a male-female relationship, it will often make sense to back the man's job because he will make more money. Why will he make more money? Because a woman will often be seen as less dedicated to her job and more dedicated to the family. Why is she less dedicated to her job and more to the family? Maybe because she is likely to make less.

In the male-dominated IT/science world, it's very hard for a woman to earn as much as her male counterpart. After reading an earlier letter I went to salary.com, and *someone* is earning enough that my current pay is "entry level" for my job title and work in this zip code; this despite a decade of experience and numerous workplace accolades. (Yes, I'm taking benefits/the lack thereof into account).

I've actually been asked, seriously, "what's a pretty girl like you doing studying physics?" The questioner followed with a detailed explanation of why an attractive woman shouldn't need to pursue something as challenging and clearly unsuitable to the "female" mind, including the argument that she would be taking up a man's job if she ever got hired. In a world where an intelligent male PhD is so ignorant as to hold such views, the idea that there's a wage gap is not so far-fetched.

Yes, it's fascinating how people rationalize their prejudice. My father served in WWII, Korea, and VietNam; he saw the pre- and post-Executive Order 9981 U.S. Army learn to deal with integrating African Americans into the armed forces. (EO 9981 was Truman's desegregation of the U.S. military, eliminating all black units and boot camps and requiring equality of opportunity, etc., without regard to "race, color, religion or national origin.") LtC. O'Neal brought me up to believe what he said he saw time and time again—that bigotry was not only wrong but stupid, that much more was gained through mutual respect and giving everyone the opportunity to contribute.

Nonetheless, people argued back then that it was wrong to expect whites to put up with blacks, and wrong to ask blacks to try to do what supposedly only whites were capable of doing.

Parker's column is the same kind of self-blind rationalization as that. Women and men both share and differ in our strengths; there are different kinds of adaptation going on than that between white and black. But to say we should deny half the population the chance to contribute, and deny ourselves the benefit of that contribution, is not only wrong, but stupid.

African Americans & Women in the U.S. Army:

http://www.army.mil/cmh/topics/afam/afam-usa.htm

http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/topics/women/Women-USA.htm

Article about female reservists in Desert Storm:

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2001/n03202001_200103203.html

P.S. Funny quote from the third URL. Maj. Gena Bonini talking about supply raids:

"We were able to get every soldier in the battalion brand new hunting-type knives. I personally didn't understand the popularity of the item, but all the guys thought they were the end-all and be-all of being a tough guy. They just had to have these big -- we're talking 12-inch-long -- knives that strapped to their legs."

Methinks Freud might have had a comment or two on that ;-)