I thank the feminist movement! It took my first 20 years of working, 20 years of getting promoted in to jobs that were previously held by men and being paid $5000-$10000 LESS THAN the man that held the job before me, and I out performed ALL of these men in my sales and profits made for the corporation...this was all in Florida...then I jumped ship to the Northeast for a job offer up there, and from that point onwards, I was paid equal to my male counterparts.... and maybe even more than them with my merit raises....I don't know if this was because the Northeast, New England actually, had made more advancements with the pay for women for an equal job that a male once held, but you'd have to think it was the North coming to terms with treating and paying women and men equally earlier than Florida...
of course, this is just my sole career, and my sob story...other women, may have had it better, and not been discriminated against as much as women were at the jobs I held..... shoot, I was the first woman, the company that I worked for, hired to be a Shoe buyer.....all their buyers were men, and had been men for the previous 30 years the company had been in business....I did get turned down for the promotion/position, by the man in charge of doing the hiring (and my future boss) who used to say to me all the time, (what do you know, you are only a 26 year old female) I kid you not....or when passing me in the hallway, would pinch my skin on my arm and say to me, "Is your skin getting any thicker?" He was a mean son of a *****....but everything I know and learned about business, I DID LEARN FROM HIM...the smartest man I ever knew in my entire life, actually.....
Anyway, he didn't hire me...but I wanted that job, more than anything else in the world....so I went over his head and went to the owner of the company, and begged him to please give me a chance at this buyer's job...he had sympathy, (and 2 daughters) and called up my future boss and told him to hire me....saying to him, "you have to give her a chance...anyone that wants a job this much, deserves the chance"....
I worked for them, for 10 more years and took my boss's position, recommended by the SOB, when he moved on to the whole sale side of the shoe business.
but seriously, to think that women of today THINK they didn't need feminism to even have the life they have today if they are in the workforce, are just UNINFORMED.