From the Atlantic to the Pacific

The distance between New York and Hawaii is just about the same as the distance between London and Beijing. No traveler crosses the United States from east to west without being astonished by its size.  The airplane speens on, hour after hour, over rolling farmland, huge cities,. empty deserts, high mountains, and wide, fast-flowing rivers.


                       
This is a country without a climate. It has every possible climate. It can snow in New York, be foggy in San Francisco, rain in Atlanta, and be sunny and hot in Phoenix all on the same day. It is a country without one kind of agriculture. It has every kind of agriculture. Anything grows in the hot, wet South. Very little seems to grow in som parts of the cold, windy North.

But America does have one special "way to life". It must have one, because Americans are always talking about it. Perhaps the people you will meet from different parts of the country will tell you what it is...

                               

WORKING WOMEN

Thirty years ago, Americans had a clear picture of how they thought women should be. The pefect woman was happy, bright homemaker in one of the new, middle-class suburbs. She had a washing machine and a vacuum cleaner to make her work easy. She had plenty of time to make her home beautiful, cook delicious meals for her husband and children, and be everyone's friend and adviser.
This advertiser's dream of American women still on TV, but it is far from the real truth. 
By 1980, one in every five families in the US had only one parent, and the number of "single-parent families" continues to rise. Women on their own with children cannot afford to stay at home. They have to find work in order to feed their families.
Many women have decided to go out and find a job. By 1985, two out of three women over the age of sixteen were working outside the home.

                            
Finding jobs may help women in some ways, but ilfe is still not perfect. Women still earn much less than men. For every dollar a man can earn, a woman only earns sixty cents.