This document is a transcript of a Congressional hearing on the economic status of women held by the Joint Economic Committee on February 3, 1982. Witnesses who testified at the hearing included Representatives Reuss, Richmond, Heckler, Wylie and Schroeder, Senators Jepsen and Kassenbaum, and a number of women active in women's equality programs. Witnesses focused their discussions largely on two of the problems that confront women today: the inequities faced by women in the labor market and the inability of low-income women to escape poverty and dependence on welfare. Witnesses testified that women's progress in the labor market has been slow, with more than two-thirds of women earning less than $10,000 per year; even for college graduate women, the median was only about 60 percent of the median wage for men. These gaps cannot be explained by differences in skills or productivity, said the witnesses, but have much more to do with occupational patterns, the concentration of women in clerical service and other low-wage jobs and the inability of women living in poverty to find regular employment, even at low wages. Witnesses at the hearing also protested the Reagan administration's proposals for cuts in government programs, which would hit hardest at women and their children: for example, cuts in welfare benefits for women who cannot find any kind of work, and cuts in day-care funding that would make it impossible for mothers of children to work. Reforms were also proposed in the Internal Revenue code to change the income tax filing requirements relating to returns of married couples, and a women's bill of rights was introduced. (KC)