Men, Women, and Work: Reflections on the Two-Person Career

Women adapt in different ways to the demands of their husbands' occupations. In the United States, the "two-person single career" is a special combination of roles whereby wives are inducted by the institutions employing their husbands into a pattern of vicarious achievement. The two-person career pattern serves as a social control mechanism which derails the occupational aspirations of the highly educated woman into a subsidiary role determined by her husband's career. It is a very American solution to a common American dilemma, in which an explicit ideology of equal opportunity in education conflicts with inequalities in occupational opportunities. Some reflections on the two-person career serve to illustrate the necessity for more determined efforts to include studies of women's lives in modern sociology and anthropology. Some areas are indicated where such studies would contribute to the development of methods and theory. Particular emphasis is placed on the kinds of education women receive: training for women's work in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India is used to point out particular contrasts with the U.S. setting, indicating also some of the features of highly sex-segregated purdah societies.