News from
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Communications and Publications, Stanhope Hall
Princeton, New Jersey 08544
Tel 609/258-3601; Fax 609/258-1301
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Patricia Coen (609) 258-5764
Date: March 28, 1997
Women and the Tax System
to Be Discussed at the Woodrow Wilson School
Princeton, N.J. -- Edward J. McCaffrey, professor of law at the University of Southern California and the California Institute of Technology, will give a lecture entitled "Taxing Women" at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs on Tuesday, April 15, in Robertson Hall, Dodds Auditorium, at 4:30 p.m. Former Congresswoman and current Woodrow Wilson School professor Patricia Schroeder will introduce McCaffrey.
McCaffrey's talk is based on his forthcoming book, Taxing Women , which is being published by the University of Chicago Press and is scheduled to be released in May. The book offers a critical analysis of the gender biases in the current tax system, a system that was designed over the period from the 1930s to the 1950s, "when the traditional family--in which the man as father and husband worked outside the home and the women as mother and wife worked inside it--was dominant." McCaffrey illustrates how the system's strong bias in favor of the single-earner family works against prevailing conditions in our country where the two-career family now predominates. He demonstrates using real-life examples how working wives are penalized by the tax laws--how the joint-filing system prescribes that women work at a high tax rate dictated by their husband's salary, how wives actually lose money by working, and why part-time work is frequently not an option for married mothers.
Finally, he offers grim examples of how the bias "translates into unstable families among the lower-income classes, where the need for two incomes is strong; stress among middle-class wives; and strong pressures on upper-class mothers to follow the traditional route and stay home with their children."
His lecture is sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.