Work Life, Family Life, and Women's Support of Feminism

Recent research has attempted to explain wide ecological divisions among women in terms of their different life styles and their subjective commitment to them. Special attention has been given to the potential effects of womens work and family life on their attitudes. This paper uses a large representative sample of American women to systematically evaluate these explanations for the 1st time. The evidence suggests that various aspects of womens family and work life do have consistent effects on womens support of a range of feminist goals but the effects are smaller than several previous studies suggested. The analysis also suggests that the relative importance of these factors may be increasing and that work and family differences may become important lines of political cleavage in the future. (authors)