Reassessing the Uneven Gender Revolution and its Slowdown

In my recent status report on the gender revolution in Gender & Society (England 2010), I argued that change in the gender system has been asymmetric, with women changing more than men. I attributed this to the devaluation of and low rewards offered to those in roles associated with women, giving women an incentive to leave them (even when they find them meaningful) and men little incentive to enter. For example, large numbers of women jettisoned full-time homemaking to enter paid employment, and many entered “male” occupations and fields of study. In support of the unevenness of the gender revolution by class, I pointed to higher employment rates of college-educated than other women and the fact that women have entered male-dominated professions and managerial jobs much more than the largely male blue-collar trades. In this issue, several able critics comment on my piece but do not dispute these points. My critics take issue with two parts of my account. Some believe that I understated continuing progress toward gender equality. Evoking the most criticism was my supply-side hypothesis about why few women integrated male-dominated blue-collar jobs, while by contrast, male-dominated professional and managerial fields were substantially integrated. While considerations of space prohibit a response to all of the points made by my critics, I respond to some of their main critiques below. I also suggest types of research I believe we need to better understand these issues.