On the other hand, opponents of affirmative action believe that enough time has passed since the civil rights movement to justify abolishing racial and gender preferences. However, until women and other minorities are granted the same opportunities to achieve educational and economic successes, affirmative action programs should be maintained and improved.
GENDER INEQUALITY IN THE EDUCATION SYSTEM AND THE WORKPLACE.
Gender inequality in education is less noticed than racial inequality in education, because economic factors do not play a significant role because most of the time boys and girls of the same family get the same education. This equality in education at the elementary and high school levels allows girl to be better suited than other minorities in applying and succeeding in undergraduate programs. This is a fact shown in resent studies that while only 35% of college graduates in 1960 were women, now 54% of college students between the ages of 18 and 24 are female.
Affirmative action is needed to attract women to underrepresented fields and to help them attain greater numbers in senior academic positions. Because a 2000 study showed that females had less confidence than males in their ability to do well in math and science, affirmative action programs need to show girls at the elementary, high school, and college levels that they too can pursue scientific fields. Affirmative action programs encouraging gender equality in academia must be improved.
Despite the many advances in women's rights, gender disparity in the workplace is still a problem in the United States. Since the 1950s, the female-to-male earnings gap has hovered around 60%: in 2001, for every dollar earned by a white man, white women earned 73 cents, African American women 63 cents, and Latinas 53 cents. Similarly, a study done in 1988 found that workplace discrimination was the "number one barrier" for women in achieving future promotions .