Measuring Equality Between the Sexes

Measures of the status of women and their potential for equality with men may be derived from women's position in five major spheres of activity — sexual relationships, reproduction, homemaking and child‐care, economic production, and political decision making— and from the degree of functional independence among these spheres of activity. Some commonly used statistical indicators of the status of women in the United States from 1900 through the early 1970s are evaluated as measures of progress toward equality between the sexes, defined here as the abolition of the social division of labor based on gender, and some new measures are proposed.