Abstract

In recent decades, women’s roles have changed greatly.  The present study addresses the primary question: How do women themselves view women’s roles?  Secondarily, this study addresses the effects of marital status, work status, education, and political party affiliation (independent variables) on women’s attitudes towards women’s roles (dependent variable). Work status was the only independent variable that showed no significant differences. Agreement or disagreement was examined toward many different statements about women’s roles; the final analysis focuses on just two of these statements: It is better if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family and A working mother can establish just as secure a relationship with her children as a mother who does not work.  The statistical analysis showed that married women, women with less education, and Republican women were more conservative in their attitudes towards gender roles, as embodied in both of these statements.  That is, they were more likely to agree that it is better for a man to work and for a woman to tend the home, just as they were more likely to agree that that if a mother works, this will hurt her children.  However, even though, on average, women reject the traditional gender roles in marriage of the husband as breadwinner and the wife as housewife, women appear ambivalent about the cost to children of mothers entering the work force.  This suggests not a survival of sexist attitudes, but a somber assessment, based on experience, of the tradeoffs most families must make in our times, when the majority of mothers of young children work full-time outside the home.