“I’ve found in my counseling practice that men who share housework tasks have a lower level of stress and are less prone to conflict,” says Loyola University nursing professor Donna Rankin. “I’m not saying that having your husband push the vacuum cleaner across the carpets while you dust the furniture will ensure a happy marriage, but it can’t hurt your relationship.”
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“Illinois…is losing control of its own budget,” explains R. Bruce Dold in Chicago Enterprise (February). “The federal government essentially determines how much the state has to pay for Medicaid, the fastest growing part of the public-aid budget. And it’s a good bet that, in the next few years, the courts will dictate how much Illinois has to spend on its local schools. The budget killer is health care. While Senate Minority Leader James ‘Pate’ Philip might like you to think that the Department of Public Aid rains money on poor people in Chicago so they can buy quarts of Thunderbird, that’s not the case. Public Aid spends $4.5 billion a year and $3 billion of that goes to Medicaid payments. One-third of that $3 billion is spent on nursing-home care for just 55,000 people. …[Governor] Edgar would have a much easier time of it if the state’s elderly, sick and poor marched off to Davenport, which is about the only way he is going to avoid a tax increase.”
“There is nothing more for women to do,” says Jeanne M. Brett of Northwestern University, summarizing a study she conducted with Linda Stroh and Anne Reilly of Loyola University examining the careers of more than 1,000 Fortune 500 corporate managers. Even when men and women had similar educations, worked in similar industries, stayed in the work force, and accepted transfers equally, the women were still paid significantly less. “With this study, corporate America has run out of explanations attributing women’s career patterns to deficits in women’s own behavior.”
