On Working Women in a Man's World, part 1

Yes, we've come a long way baby. We're just not "there" yet. I'm not a feminist freaking out about the inequality in the working world, I am grateful that I was born and raised in the USA. I don't hate men. But I've had personal experiences in a man's world that I feel the need to share.
For 10 years I was pretty much the only female in a small manufacturing company. There were one or two female assistants that came along over the years, but they never stayed more than a few months. There was a guy in the office who did whatever he could to break them down, to make then cry and then quit. He never was able to get to me, he was terminated before I ever quit there. The owner of the business was definitely a full fledged chauvinist. But for several years he was decent and sometimes even very good to me. After the 8th year of my employment things started to go sour. My boss decided that I need to start my own business, one that would specialize in a part of the business we were currently in. I did all the paperwork and had everything going. He hired a man to take my current position and sent me out with one of the sales reps to "grow" my business. After a few months, he lost interest in the project and rejected every proposal I brought to him. My replacement wasn't cutting it and he wanted to get rid of him and put me back in my old job. I'm pretty easy going and went along with it. He laid off my replacement and I went in to clean up the mess. I found out my replacement had been being paid $20,000 more per year than I, for the same job. I questioned by boss about this, he couldn't use the old "he has a family to support" crap because he knew I was supporting my two kids and my ex did everything he could to not pay child support. As I recall his answer was something about thinking he would do a better job due to prior employment experience, blah, blah, blah. Guess what? He couldn't. I didn't get that $20,000 raise either. It took me two years but I found another job. He was angry with me for leaving and even after 6 years when we met at the funeral of a collage, we didn't speak to each other. That company went out of business a couple of years after I left, it just seemed to fall apart with the owner's sanity and what little integrity he had left. But that is not my story to tell.