Sex Roles in Transition: A Ten-Year Perspective

Abstract

Popular treatments of the changing role of women continue to belabor the myth that the status of women has enjoyed uninterrupted progress in modern history. To the contrary, closer scrutiny suggests that women in the seventh decade of the twentieth century still are striving to regain the relatively independent economic and in­ dividual status they enjoyed before the disruption caused by the Industrial Revolu­ tion (Myrdal & Klein 1956, Smelser 1959, Goode 1963, Knudsen 1 969, Blake 1974).1 Sparked largely by the Women's Movement, the social sciences have witnessed a recent rekindling of interest in sex roles. With some notable exceptions, the spate of recent studies regrettably focuses almost exclusively upon the female role and neglects the masculine side of the sex role equation. Within the field of sociology, at least one critical review (Hochschild 1 973), several research bibliographies (Al­ dous & Hill 1967, Cisler 197 1 , Jacobs 1971 , Astin, Suniewick & Dweck 197 1 , Astin, Parelman & Fisher 1974), and research agendas (Epstein 1973a; A. Daniels, forth­ coming) have signaled the renewed concern with sex roles.