Female subservience over the years has been fostered by the onerous and oppressive social restrictions placed on women since Genesis. Vestiges of that subservience and the second-class status it has brought continue to haunt women through academic and employment barriers, regardless of education and professional credentials.

In 2010, women earned only 77 cents for every dollar men earned; of 249 mayors in cities with populations of more than 100,000, 14.5 percent were women; 16.8 percent of the 111th U.S. Congress were women; and the proportion of women in state legislatures averaged only a slightly better 24.4 percent.

At the top of the jobs pyramid, the upward march of women is stalled. Prominent female CEOs are so rare that they count as celebrities — Meg Whitman (eBay), Carly Fiorina (Hewlett-Packard) and Anne Mulcahy (Xerox). Only 3 percent of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women.

However, in a stark reversal from the 1970s, men are now more likely than women to hold only a high school diploma. Women are earning 60 percent of master’s degrees, about half of all law and medical degrees and more doctorates than men.

With Justice Elena Kagan’s confirmation as the fourth woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, a third of the high court is now female. And, courtesy of Mattel, Barbie’s new job as a computer engineer is a definite sign of encouragement for young girls seeking to enter STEM careers.

Women have also begun to dominate middle management, and their numbers in several professional careers are also rising.

In 1970, women contributed 2.6 percent of the family income. Now the typical working wife brings home 42.2 percent, and four in 10 mothers — many of them single mothers — are the primary breadwinners in their families.

In the United States, it appears that the economics of the 21st century may well be better suited to women. During the recent recession, three quarters of the 8 million jobs lost were held by men. The worst-hit industries were overwhelmingly male and deeply identified with construction, manufacturing and high finance. While we can expect male jobs in manufacturing to recover somewhat, the ascension of women in the U.S. workforce is definitely occurring.

Despite the present wage gap, and the fact that women still do most of the child care, and that the upper reaches of the Fortune 500 and many large businesses are still dominated by men, there has been a steady accumulation of workforce positions held by women. Even though many of these are not the highest paying right now, they add up to an economy that has become more congenial to women than to men. Furthermore, the attributes for workers that are most valuable today — social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit calmly and focus — are, at first glance, not male dominant.

Additionally, a large portion of the workforce in a post-industrial, white-collar economy increasingly requires formal education credentials that women appear more able to acquire in early adulthood. College educations, like the economy, now value self-control, focus and verbal applications which seem to come more easily to women.

If we are to learn from 6,000 years of written history, men and women must recognize the time has come to end gender wars and the concept of female subservience.

Men and women need to embrace a mutually shared love of dignity, value and equality which gives every person the opportunity to better define their respective skills and abilities in order to meet the privilege of raising future generations on behalf of all of humanity — including those with Y chromosomes.