It was also a consequence. Workplace feminism exacerbated inequality. It increased the number of intra-class marriages, and it undermined the New Deal culture of the “family wage”—the common-sense assumption among Americans of all classes that a wage paid to a “working man” went to support his wife and children as well. In its imperfect way, the family wage had compensated the housewife for her unwaged work. Whether she got sufficient control over the part of the wage that she flat-out earned is a separate, intra-familial question and potentially a genuine feminist grievance. Still, at the
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