money, because they have to support themselves, because they are heads of households, or because their husbands do not make enough money to cover expenses and meet high prices. Women, as well as men, have compelling economic reasons for working. They need and deserve well-paying and meaningful jobs., A great deal has to be accomplished before we reach this goal. First of all, we must realize that a reordering of the economy to provide full and equal employment for women - and for men - will benefit our entire society. Every time we reduce unemployment by 1%, we pick up $ 16 billion in tax revenues and saved unemployment benefits. And by employing all the women who want to work at jobs that utilize their full potential, we will be making use of valuable talent presently going to waste. BOOKSefforts are now being made to render the traditional book as obsolete as the stage play or the symphony orchestra. Small fortunes have been spent putting books on the Internet. The plug-in book is now being produced by Research and Development bureaucrats in media conglomerates. Books could be stored in the electronic spines of hand-held light-boxes. They could be loaded into photosensitive pages for carrying on trains and planes. But all those developments have encountered consumer resistance, people appear to find flickering screens tiring. They make eyes ache since the scanning pulses are in constant movement. The flicker is said to limit lateral vision and make speed-reading (and mistake spotting) difficult. The eye is also strained since the screen is brighter than ambient light. And all screens need electronic power. What these souls are struggling to go is merely to reinvent what Caxton discovered half a millennium ago. It is called a book. Technologists dislike books because they are low tech yet the market loves them. The book needs no power supply and creates no radio interference. It is cheap, small and portable, usable on the beach, while walking or curled up in bed. It is virtually indestructible. A book can be read fast or slow at the flick of a finder it can fie dog-eared, ripped up, passed, around and shelved for instant and easy retrieval. A row of books is a joy to behold. This object is, in short, a technical and aesthetic masterpiece. Had the Internet been around for years and had I invented printing on paper, I would be hailed as a genius. Attitudes to work and leisureadults aspire to more leisure, but, in fact, not many people have the necessary initiative to use the free time they already have very constructively. The sad fact is that we need work because it imposes the discipline we need. Life seems aimless and we secretly look forward to our work again. We dream about personal fulfillment but probably find it more in our work than in our leisure time. This depends on age. The young are free from work and responsibility, and freedom comes naturally to them. However, after they begin jobs they become conditioned to work. They find they need it, however much they complain about its routine and regimentation. Obviously this again depends on the kind of work. Those with rewarding jobs, or jobs that require creativity, receive genuine satisfaction from their work, but most of us are in conventional 9 to 5 jobs which offer little scope for imagination. We leave our work only to face a leisure that we find difficult to cope with. Our mistake is in regarding leisure as a chance to do nothing, where...
