Sex Differentiation in Role Expectations and Performance

Abstract

Sex-role expectations and performance at home and work and social participation are examined on the basis of 444 interviews among the adult population of Helsinki. Women are supposed to be and are more passive in almost all kinds of social participation outside the home, even though the Finnish women, internationally compared, have a high educational level and often work outside the home. The attitudes toward the division of labor between the sexes show that expectations about a woman's employment for economic reasons correlate neither with radical nor with traditional views about the woman's role. The women are more dissatisfied with the division of household tasks at home than with their occupational positions. The norms demanding equality of the sexes seem to be better followed in public than in private life.