Leaving Women Behind ― Modern Families, Outdated Laws

This is a paperbound edition of a 2006 book. While the massive entry of women into the labor market of the past 60 years has been one of the most fundamental social and economic changes of our times, according to Strassel (a member of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal), Colgan (a member of the National Council on the Humanities), and Goodman (founder and president, National Center for Policy Analysis), tax law, labor law, and other institutions are still designed to favor women who remain at home. Focusing on federal government policies and institutions, they identify legal and policy areas that are unfair to working women and provide recommendations for redress. These recommendations include instituting a fairer tax system for two-earner couples, flexible employee benefit system that provides more choice, more flexibility in labor law to allow for alternatives to the 40-hour workweek, abolition of arbitrary limits on retirement savings contributions, a system for providing tax relief for health insurance, a system that makes health and retirement benefits portable, and abolition of the earnings penalty for those receiving Social Security survivor's benefits. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Kimberley A. Strassel is a senior editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal. She joined the editorial page in 1999, after working as a news reporter for Dow Jones in London and New York. Ms. Strassel is a native of Oregon and a graduate of Princeton University. Celeste Colgan is an educational consultant, and member of the National Council on the Humanities and the Board of Trustees of Mesa State College in Colorado. She formerly served as a senior fellow and director of the Women in the Economy Project of the National Center for Policy Analysis. Before joining the NCPA, she held various positions, including director of the Wyoming Department of Commerce, as a member of the faculty of the University of Wyoming and Casper College, and in corporate and family-owned businesses. Dr. Colgan received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park. John C. Goodman is founder and president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a nonprofit public policy institute with offices in Dallas, Texas, and Washington, D.C. He is the author or coauthor of more than 200 articles and eight books, including Lives at Risk (2004). He received the prestigious Duncan Black Award for the best scholarly article on public choice economics in 1988. Dr. Goodman received a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University and has taught at a number of colleges and universities.