Women’s attempts to join men in the public sphere are limited because of
traditional beliefs about women’s roles and taboos. Men continue to dominate
economic and political life and their contributions are more highly valued
(Richmond-Abbott, 1992 : 28). Despite being the majority of the population,
women in the United States are a “minority group” in terms of their power as well
as in the sociological sense. This phenomenon is the result of the “individual and
collective discrimination that they experience and because of their inability to
resist being either thought of or treated as inferior” (Figueira~McDonough and
Sarri, 1986 : 11).