>at the lower end of
>the spectrum women were always in the "have to work" category. It was the
>high-skill jobs that had the biggest influx of women,
I heard Chalmers Johnson speak to a small audience at UCLA about ten years ago. His talk centered mostly on Japan and he took a lot of questions afterward. Someone asked him to compare education systems in the U.S. and Japan. He gave a broad answer about how in general terms the U.S. had poor primary and secondary education, good college, and grad schools the best in the world. He said in Japan you had great secondary education and then college and grad school were more afterthoughts.
One person commented that primary/secondary school in the U.S. hadn't always been bad and Johnson agreed, saying that early education in the U.S. for decades depended on exploitation of women and when talented women had other choices they took them.
[As an aside, I remember Max Sawicky saying somewhere that reading Johnson's books beginning with Blowback was like having someone who strongly supported the Vietnam War in '68 come and tell you he was wrong and you were right. Johnson showed his old school colors when he was answering the question about education. He said in the U.S. you used to have smart women teaching grade school and high school and now you have dumb women doing it.]