6 Introduction Some Facts in the Case femininity are conveyed to her.We cannot understand Delia women is 45 per cent of the average income of all men. without having some grasp of the tensions and contradictions in Statistics on wealth are harder to come by,as wealth is better these processes and the ways they change between generations. concealed.But there is no doubt at all that men control the major These are not independent issues.They interact;indeed they concentrations of wealth in the Australian economy.The magazine define a sphere of social life that is strongly patterned.As soon as Business Revie Weekly compiles,from a miscellany of sources,an this is recognized,it is obvious that the pattern is not peculiar to annual list of the 200 richest people in the country.In the 1985 Delia,Rae and Fred.What happens in their milieu is part of a list just four of the listed names were women. much wider set of social processes,which must be analyzed to Australia has a reputation for putting women down;are these understand what is happening in Delia's life.Let us turn,therefore, figures exceptional?There are no systematic statistics on men's to evidence about these patterns on the larger scale. and women's incomes on a world scale.But there are many pointers to the state of affairs in individual countries.A recent International Labor Office study of manufacturing industries in The Public World:Wages,Education,Jobs twenty countries,for instance,shows that women's wages are less than men's wages in every country studied.As examples: The division of labour in Delia's household and the kinds of jobs Women's wages as her mother and father hold outside,have roots in the conventional images of man-as-breadwinner and woman-as-home-maker.They of men's also have a hard material base.We do not have Fred and Rae West Germany 73 Japan 43 Prince's tax returns but the general position is known.In 1978, 63 the year of these interviews,the average wages for adult full-time Egypt El Salvador employees in Australia were $239 a week if they were men,$183 81 if they were women.That is to say,a decade after the Equal Pay Figures for Eastern European economies show much the same Case that established a notional policy of sex equality in pay rates, pattern as in Western Europe: women got 77 per cent of what men got.By 1985 this had moved Women's median full- up to 82 per cent. time earnings as of These figures greatly overstate the general level of equality.In the mid-1980s more women than men earn less than a full wage men'了 because they are less than full-time workers.About 36 per cent Czechoslovakia 67 Poland 67 of employed women in Australia are part-timers(Rae Prince being 73 one),compared with 6 per cent of employed men.Taking all Hungary employed people,women's average earnings are 66 per cent of A comparison of Latin American countries uses a different measure, men's (1985 figures).Further,a higher proportion of women setting cut-off points and showing what percentages of women and workers earn no wage because they areare unemployed,and many men fall above and below them.These figures show the percentages more women than men have very low incomes because they are falling in the lowest income category in each country: dependent on a pension or welfare benefit.Figures for 1981/2 Women Men show that 1.97 million women have social security as their main source of income compared with 0.78 million men.The result is Colombia (all employees) 47% 38% 27% 7% that the average income of women who have any income at all is Chile(non-agricultural) Panama(non-agricultural) 34% 6% 48 per cent of the men's average(1981/2).And even that overstates the degree of equality,since a higher proportion of women have Clearly the pattern of unequal income is international,though the no income at all.Adjusting for that,the average income of all level of inequality varies from place to place