Engaging Helen Hacker

Collected Works and Reflections of a Feminist Pioneer

Heather McLaughlin and Kyle Green

with Christopher Uggen

University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing

Minneapolis

Copyright © 2018 by Heather McLaughlin, Kyle Green, and Christopher Uggen.

Published by the University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing
309 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55544
www.lib.umn.edu/publishing

ISBN: 978-1-946135-49-0

Cover design by Delaney FitzPatrick.

This book is available in alternative formats, including print, at z.umn.edu/helenhacker 

Portions of this book were previously published. All articles are reprinted with permission from the original publisher or author.

Section I: Eugenia Smith, “Helen Hacker: Rebel with a Cause.” First published in CLA Today. © 2006 University of Minnesota. Reprinted by permission of University of Minnesota. Helen Hacker, “Slouching Toward Sociology.”  First published in Individual Voices, Collective Visions: Fifty years of Sociology, ed Ann Goetting and Sarah Fenstermaker. © 1995 Temple University Press. Reprinted by permission of Temple University Press. Section II. Helen M. Hacker, “The New Burdens of Masculinity” in Marriage and Family Living © 1957 John Wiley & Sons. Reprinted by permission of John Wiley & Sons. Helen M. Hacker, “Men’s Attitudes Toward Gender Role Issues.” First published in Sexuality Today and Tomorrow, edited by Sol Gordon & Roger W. Libby. © 1976 Helen M. Hacker. Reprinted by permission of author. Helen M. Hacker, “The Feminine Protest of the Working Wife.” First published in The Indian Journal of Social Work. © 1971 Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Reprinted by permission of Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Helen M. Hacker. 1976. “The Socio-Economic Context of Sex and Power: A Study of Women, Work and Family Roles in Four Israeli Institutional Frameworks.” Pp. 579-600 in Women—Volume I, A PDI Research Reference Work, edited by Florence L. Denmark. Helen M. Hacker. 1977. “Problems in Defining and Measuring Marital Power Cross-Culturally.” First published in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences © 1977 John Wiley & Sons. Reprinted by permission of John Wiley & Sons. Section III. Helen M. Hacker. 1971. “Homosexuals: Deviant or Minority Group?” Pages 65-92 in The Other Minorities: Nonethnic Collectivities Conceptualized as Minority Groups, edited by Edgar Sagarin. Helen M. Hacker, “The Future of Sexuality: A Sociologist’s View.” First published in Sexual Choices, edited by Gilbert D. Nass, Rober W. Libby, & Mary Pat Fisher. © 1981 Helen Hacker. Reprinted by permission of the author. Helen M. Hacker, “Blabbermouths and Clams: Sex Differences in Self-Disclosure in Same-Sex and Cross-Sex Friendship Dyads.” First published in Psychology of Women Quarterly © 1981 Sage. Reprinted by permission from Sage. Section IV. Helen M. Hacker, “Bases of Individuation in the Modern World.” First published in Phylon © 1955 Clark Atlanta University. Reprinted by permission of Clark Atlanta University. Helen M. Hacker, “Gender Roles From a Cross-Cultural Perspective.” Pp. 185-214 in Gender and Sex in Society, edited by Lucile Duberman.© 1975 Helen M. Hacker. Reprinted by permission of the author. Helen M. Hacker and Audrey Meyer, “Dateline: Nairobi 1985.” First Published in SWS Network News © 1985 Helen M. Hacker and Audrey Meyer. Reprinted by permission from the author. Section V. Helen M. Hacker, “Secret Societies.” First published in American Journal of Sociology © 1948 University of Chicago. Reprinted by permission from University of Chicago.Helen M. Hacker. 1951. “Structural-Functionalism as a ‘Deductive Ideal Type Method.’” American Journal of Sociology © 1951 University of Chicago. Reprinted by permission of University of Chicago. Helen M. Hacker, “The Ishmael Complex.” First published in American Journal of Psychotherapy © 1952 Helen Hacker. Reprinted by permission from author. Helen M. Hacker, “How Clergymen View Hippiedom.” First published in The Christian Century © 1970 the Christian Century. Reprinted by permission from The Christian Century.

I. Revisiting Helen Hacker

I remember what Oscar Wilde said: “never do in private what can’t be shouted from the rooftops.” And that’s the way I feel—I didn’t say anything the whole world can’t hear.

We (Heather and Kyle) first met Dr. Helen Mayer Hacker in 2011 as graduate students at the University of Minnesota. Helen spent the long evening pouring us drinks, sharing stories and laughter, and engaging in deep intellectual discussions. Her story is a fascinating one. Adopted and raised by a Jewish family in Minneapolis in the 1920s, she dropped out of high school in the 1930s and enrolled in classes at the University of Minnesota. By the mid-1940s she had finished her coursework at Columbia University, and completed her dissertation and earned her Ph.D. in 1961. She published her most well-known articles during that window, but continued writing and teaching about gender, sexuality, family, and other sociological topics until long after she retired from Adelphi University in 1984. We prepared this volume with the hope and expectation that others will enjoy reading her work and remembering her as much as we have.        

In this book we bring together the life and work of Dr. Hacker, a pioneering feminist sociologist and tireless social activist who advocated for women and other marginalized groups for over sixty years. In her scholarship, her abundant intellectual curiosity and courage are difficult to miss. Taken together, the pieces of this collection highlight how her continuous push for the study of new topics and for innovative ways of measuring social phenomena, particularly within the areas of gender, family, and sexuality, helped lay the foundation for the work that followed over the next half century.

Hacker’s nontraditional career path and existence on a number of social margins played key roles in pushing her to always move beyond the established script. While influenced by her interest in a critical engagement with gender, her scholarship demonstrated an independence and desire to study groups that other scholars had relegated to the margins, whether due to race, sexuality, or religion. In doing so, she demonstrated an appreciation for intersectionality long before the approach was coined, theorized, and popularized by scholars such as Kimberlé Crenshaw and Patricia Hill Collins. It is also worth noting that Hacker’s empathy extended beyond groups that faced structural oppression, as she managed to be both critical and caring when making sense of the challenges that white men faced in a changing world. During our 2011 interview, Helen told us that she wrote about men “to be even-handed. And because of my personal experience. I don’t know, maybe I didn’t want to be accused of being one-sided or just caring about women.”

Hacker was also the quintessential gadfly, never content to remain confined to academia or allow an injustice to stand. She proudly made waves (“I heard that alumnae were threatening to cut off bequests to the college unless they got rid of this damn Yankee”) and took extraordinary steps to make lemonade when life threw lemons her way (“I was giving soap box talks against imperialism on Moore and 6th Ave…carefully conserving all the vegetables that were hurled at me from the stoop and inviting people over…for dinner.”). She never hesitated to voice her opinion—whether in academic journals, professional conferences, newspaper op-eds, or her own fashion: “I was wearing my other t-shirt with freedom riders but I noticed it had a bleach stain, so I didn’t wear that shirt today, but most of my t-shirts make some kind of statement.” It is worth noting that Helen’s backup t-shirt of choice, emblazoned with the words “allergic to stupid,” was by no means quiet.

“Allergic to stupid”  

Returning to Hacker’s work while armed with contemporary scholarship on sex and gender provides a fresh perspective on many issues of particular relevance today. As you read, you may want to reflect on how these issues have evolved over time, how society has both changed and remained the same, and the implications for men, women, and those whose identities do not fit within the gender binary. We also hope the collection provides an opportunity to be inspired by Helen’s abundance of grit, empathy, and humor. In the early 1950s women comprised less than one-third of the labor force, with the vast majority relegated to low-paying, less prestigious positions. But by that time, Hacker had established herself as a groundbreaking feminist scholar—an accomplishment made more impressive considering the obstacles she faced as a Jewish woman who was single or divorced during a time when being unmarried was less socially acceptable.

Hacker’s two most well-known readings offer a useful starting point for appreciating her larger contribution to the discipline. Together, “Women as a Minority Group” and “The New Burdens of Masculinity” have been cited hundreds of times by many of the most prominent gender scholars of the century, including Joan Acker, Raewyn Connell, Myra Marx Ferree, Arlie Hochschild, Roberta Simmons, and Candace West. The collection of authors drawing explicitly upon her work demonstrates her influence across gender studies and masculinity studies—subfields that too often remain divided areas of specialty.

“Women as a Minority Group” offers a clear demonstration of Hacker’s ability to breathe new life into a subject by offering an alternative theoretical and analytic lens. While we were not able to obtain the copyright necessary to include “Women as a Minority Group” (1951) or “Women as a Minority Group: Twenty Years Later” (1975) in this volume, we do highly recommend tracking down both articles in the archives or using your favorite search engine to find a copy online. In the 1951 article, Hacker was the first person to apply the term “minority group” to women. In doing so she raised a number of questions central to the study of women and society, including: (1) to what extent do women collectively identify as a minority group (an issue that had yet to be explored in mainstream sociology journals); (2) what would it actually look like for men and women to be fully “assimilated,” and is this erasure of all difference a desirable goal; and (3) what hypotheses of inter-group relations may be tested in regard to men and women. These questions continue to have particular relevance and receive considerable attention in the field of gender studies. For example, scholars—most famously Judith Lorber—continue to offer their own visions of what “degendering” might look like at various levels of analysis.

In “The New Burdens of Masculinity,” included here in Section I, Hacker again demonstrates her ability to push past the constraints of the dominant thought paradigms of the time, positing that the difficulties of contemporary masculinity arise from three sources: (1) the pressures of work and the social expectations of upward mobility not matching lived experiences; (2) unattainable masculine ideals that are both contradictory and shifting; and (3) the increasing number of women entering the workforce and the ambiguity this introduces to family dynamics. In asking these questions she effectively bridges the Talcott Parsons-inspired role-based approach to understanding gender relations as part of the functioning of a well-ordered society with a more critical version of masculinity studies that would not enter mainstream sociology until the mid-1980s, led by Connell’s early essays (1983) and the publication of Carrigan et al.’s article “Toward a new Sociology of Masculinity” (1985).

Hacker’s well-known articles were once required reading in the classroom and were present in any literature review related to the respective subjects. As sociologist Dr. Laura Kramer reminded us in an email exchange on Hacker’s legacy, we tend to forget about the important scholarship written between feminist waves; foundational articles are replaced by the works they inspired, eventually moved to recommended reading lists, and finally relegated to long strings of citations in journals.

As we read over these works during the early stages of this project, we could not help but reflect on the value of returning to the work of our predecessors and mapping the historical developments of the sub-disciplines. This is not only an informative undertaking, but an inspiring one. Hacker, for instance, served as a bridge between the Goffmanesque perspective on interaction, evident in her discussion of sex/gender roles, and critical examinations of gender and power.

Hacker’s writing also reminds us that much of the social phenomena we currently study are not new and that many of her questions remain unanswered. In “The New Burdens of Masculinity,” for example, she examines the popular belief that mothers are unable to teach their boys about masculinity and that the erosion of the traditional status of men is the cause of many societal problems—discourses that emerge again with the mens’ movements of the 1980s, during the more recent economic crisis dubbed the “mancession,” and that are the subject of countless opinion pieces inspired by and in reaction to Hannah Rosin’s provocative “End of Men” essay (2010). To see questions that seem “unique” and “new” being grappled with more than half a century ago forces a humbleness and appreciation of historical trends that, we argue, only leads to better scholarship.

Reading the Book

When a scholar’s insights grow to become taken-for-granted knowledge about the social world, that scholar has attained real success. Dr. Hacker made absolutely fundamental contributions to the ways in which sociologists, other scholars, and the public understand social relations in gender, sexuality, family relations, and related fields.

Some of her writing from the 1950s and 1970s is so fresh that it would be at home in a journal of 2018. Other writing, of course, is more a product of its time. Such is the fate of sociologists who write for five decades and are likely to be read for at least five more. Helen would welcome critique and argument. As she told us in 2011, “I would rather keep company with an intelligent fascist than a stupid liberal.”

In making Dr. Hacker’s writings available now and in perpetuity, we hope readers will be similarly inspired and moved to reconsider their own lives and work. We have organized selections from her published works and her personal archives, following as her interest in better understanding gender relations took her into the areas of (II) Work and Family; (III) Sexuality, Intimacy, and Friendships; (IV) Women of All Types and Locations; and, finally, (V) Helen M. Hacker: Critic and Provocateur. Of course, with a scholar who was defined by her curiosity, the sections are a bit artificial—she simply wasn’t someone who could be contained by categories and boxes.

Before proceeding to her scholarship, however, we present Eugenia Smith’s (2006) biographical reflection written for the Spring 2006 issue of CLA Today, a publication of the University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts. Helen’s own account of her life course and career trajectory follows. She prepared “Slouching Toward Sociology” for an edited volume that showcased the influences and influence of great women sociologists. As we discovered in our interview at her apartment, Helen prided herself on truth-telling—about herself and about the social world.

Section Contents

Eugenia Smith. 2006. “Helen Hacker: Rebel with a Cause.” CLA Today.

Helen M. Hacker. 1995. “Slouching Toward Sociology,” in Individual Voices, Collective Visions: Fifty years of Sociology, ed. Ann Goetting and Sarah Fenstermaker.

References

Carrigan, Tim, Bob Connell, and John Lee. 1985. “Toward a new Sociology of Masculinity.” Theory and Society 14(5): 551-604.

Connell, R. W. 1983. Which Way is Up? Essays on Class, Sex, and Culture. Sydney, Australia: Allen & Unwin.

Rosin, Hannah. 2010. “The End of Men.” The Atlantic, July/August. Retrieved September 7, 2018 (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/308135/).

Helen Hacker: Rebel with a Cause

Eugenia Smith Originally published 2006

As a student in the 1930s, Helen Mayer Hacker would sneak into Northrop Auditorium and hide under a back-row seat during recording sessions to listen to the Minneapolis Symphony (conducted by Eugene Ormandy) in live surround sound. She couldn’t afford even the cheap seats for the evening performances. For many decades later, this self-described rebel enjoyed the music she loved from cushier seats at Lincoln Center in New York City, where she lived in a nearby apartment.

Following Hacker‘s death at age 120 (her best guess), that apartment—which she purchased in 1993—will belong to the University of Minnesota, which will use proceeds from its sale to support fellowships for sociology students completing dissertations with a feminist bent. No, she’s not wealthy, she says, just the beneficiary of “unearned increment”—soaring property values.

“I moved to the Upper West Side from a middle-income housing project on the Lower East Side,” says Hacker, “so you can say I moved up both geographically and socially, from a view of the East River to a view of the Hudson. It’s ironic that an old socialist should profit from capitalism, but so did Engels.”

The bequest is an expression of Hacker’s deep commitment to higher education as an avenue to the kind of enlightened understanding that she hopes will make the world a more humane place. “I want to smooth the path for feminist scholars by enabling them to work full time on their dissertations,” says Hacker, adding that she was denied that opportunity; her dissertation was 20 years in the making. Her late start notwithstanding, Hacker has held faculty positions at Hunter College, Hofstra University, and Adelphi University, where she was a professor of sociology until her retirement in 1984, when she began teaching at the New School for Social Research in New York.

Listening to this diminutive but intellectually formidable 89-year-old “gadfly” (her word) tell her story—complete with uncannily sharp details and vivid gestural flourishes— you really do believe that she not only will live another 30 years but also will continue lecturing, traveling, and writing as she does now, with uncommon gusto. Hacker has spent a lifetime as a scholar and champion of “un-popular causes and outsiders.” Her pioneering research in the sociology of gender and her advocacy on behalf of people relegated to the margins of society “through no fault of their own” has made her a thorn in many a thick hide over the decades, and a champion to people sidelined in the race to the good life.

Taking the high road

Hacker’s commitment to social justice was a kind of birthright. Hacker was adopted as an infant from a “desperately poor” family of nine children into a Jewish family teetering on the economic edge—at a time when being adopted and a Jew was a double whammy. Doted on by loving adoptive parents, she nonetheless longed for siblings and felt oddly unmoored.

Accompanying her “amateur Lady Bountiful” mother on consciousness-raising charitable visits to Minneapolis’s North Side, the young Hacker learned to hate “the smell of poverty and oppression” that engulfed the poor and disenfranchised immigrant families she saw. And not surprisingly, she made no secret of her outrage. A caption beneath a girlhood photo in the family album reads, “Helen: for social justice.”

Hacker was driven not only by her sense of grievance against systems of social injustice but also by a brilliant, free-ranging, and impatient mind that was “keen on spotting flaws in logic”—aided by an intellectual obstinacy that took “no” as an invitation to debate. She spent her girlhood steeped in books (she read Freud at age 10). But she credits the University of Minnesota for her true “intellectual awakening,” recalling a place where “even the most outrageous ideas” were given a respectful hearing by professors whose names she can still rattle off with perfect recall. It was at the U that the girl who had always “felt out of sync” with the conventional world and with her high school classmates first discovered what she now calls “that happy feeling.”

When her parents moved to Chicago, Hacker reluctantly left the University to follow them—and enrolled as a junior at the University of Chicago, where she majored in economics “to find out whether Marx was right.” (Marx, she discovered, was “a better sociologist than economist.”) As a student, she held a series of jobs, including one sewing skirts in a factory. Her labor sympathies piqued, she set her cap on organizing for the International Lady Garment Workers Union but had to put those ambitions on hold when she was fired—“I wasn’t good at piece work,” she grins. Meanwhile, she became active in the Workers Defense League and (on the morning of her final exams) joined the picket line during a strike of the Cap Makers Union.

Slouching toward the scholarly life

In 1937, armed with her A.B. in economics and social sciences, Hacker moved “in search of the Bohemian life” to New York’s Greenwich Village, where she eventually landed a job with The Advance, a publication of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, and “became a soapbox orator.” From there, she went to Los Angeles, where she worked for the California State Relief Administration as a case aide, and then to Washington, D.C., where she became a junior economist in the Bureau of Commerce, working on the 1940 U.S. Census.

In 1941, a fellowship brought Hacker to Columbia University, where she earned her M.A. in intergroup relations and, eventually (following several teaching and market research detours), a Ph.D. in sociology with a minor in social psychology. During her long and productive career, she has published more than 21 articles (with several more under construction), including her pathbreaking 1951 article, “Women as a Minority Group,” and her “opening salvo” in men’s studies, “The New Burdens of Masculinity.” Hacker’s travels have taken her to six continents to lecture and do research on subjects ranging from gender-bending trouser roles in opera to the sociology of knowledge to same-sex and cross-sex friendship dyads. They also have brought her back many times to the Twin Cities, where she visits members of the birth family she tracked down several decades ago.

Trying to pin down and define the moving object that is Hacker’s mind is nigh unto impossible. Hacker’s eclectic scholarly output “roams the sociological spectrum rather than mining one vein,” she notes in her autobiographical essay “Slouching Toward Sociology.” Ditto her life interests, which range from Baroque opera to feminist epistemology.

“I’m protean,” she says, her eyes gleaming with challenge. “You’ll never capture that.” But at least one thing is sure: Hacker has devoted her life to causes she believes in—and now, her bequest to the University, her “modest contribution,” ensures that her commitment to social justice and to higher education will live on as a fellowship endowment for graduate students who share that commitment.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, Hacker insists that she is not a risk-taker. “Intellectual honesty has always been my lodestar,” she says. “I like to think of myself as a free thinker for whom no idea is too outrageous to be considered.” She also is emphatically not a “do-gooder,” she maintains, dismissing with a wave the suggestion that an uncommonly generous heart beats beneath that feisty exterior. She simply set out to “shake the world from its underpinnings,” she says. “I’ve had a great time throwing my weight around.”

The world may still be turning on its axis, but the indomitable Hacker has made it wobble a bit. And behind the twinkle in her eye is an invitation to wrestle—and to join her in the paid seats at the opera.

References

Ann Goetting and Sarah Fenstermaker, eds., Individual Voices, Collective Visions: Fifty Years of Women in Sociology, Temple University Press, 1995).

Slouching Towards Sociology

Helen M. Hacker Originally published 1995

Family of Orientation

Four things no one ever told me I have always known: there is no God; the world is full of injustice; babies don’t come from heaven; I was an adopted child. I was told, however, that I was Jewish. All the foregoing, I believe, conduced to a sociological orientation. The adopted child receives a double message. You belong to us, and yet you don’t. You were chosen by us, but you were rejected by somebody else. Early on I formed the concept that my origin was lowly and that my adoptive parents were constantly assessing what about me could be attributed to their benign upbringing and what to inheritance. They were third-generation German Jews who clung to a social status not matched by their financial means. My mother never actually used the word “kike” in reference to more recently arrived Jews from Eastern Europe, but rather the patronizing expression “first generation!” As an amateur Lady Bountiful, she regularly visited several poor immigrant families on the near north side of Minneapolis, bringing care packages and counsel. I was her unwilling companion on these social work calls, hating the smell of poverty and suspecting that my birth family was their kin. “Where does Helen get her love of books from?” my mother often mused. “Sidney [my father] and I are no intellectuals.” Again, although she never came out and said it, I felt she was alluding to some gender-misplaced, Talmudic, shtetl background. Just before my sixteenth birthday, I was rushed by a sorority that pledged only German Jews, and although my best friends were of Russian provenance, I joined, under extreme pressure from my mother, and felt like both a traitor and an imposter.

Our family was a matriarchy. My mother’s dominance was reinforced by her husband s financial failure; thus our household had to be partially subsidized by my mother s sisters, who had had the wit to marry men who were already rich or who became so. My father began as an optometrist, but my mother’s prodding forced him into business first with my maternal grandfather and subsequently on his own. He went bankrupt when I was five, and from then on penny-pinching became my mother’s occupation. To reduce expenses, we moved in with another family when I was ten. As an only child, I was delighted to acquire siblings so easily. They were two brothers a few years older than I who taught me how to play football and baseball with a hardball. Perhaps this experience helped consolidate my feelings, an outlook not widely shared, that girls could play the same games as boys.

As I mentioned, I do remember being told that I was Jewish. It was after school one day that I asked my mother where I should be going on Sunday mornings, a question I had been unable to answer when my classmates put it to me. Her reply was an offer, which I eagerly accepted, to join Temple Israel, a reform congregation. During that summer vacation I was tutored in Jewish history and Bible in order to enter the pre-confirmation class in the fall. The following year, each member of the confirmation class was asked to participate in an essay contest on "What the Synagogue Means to Me.” My entry, under the pseudonym “Faith Ascendant:” won the prize—probably because of my research on the synagogue as a house of prayer, house of meeting, house of study. But the nascent sociologist was betrayed in the first paragraph in which I said that when I entered the synagogue on Friday night I felt like more of a Jew and less of a Jew than at any other time. More of a Jew because I was with my own people, suffused with a “consciousness of kind;” less of a Jew because I did not have “to prepare a face to meet the faces“ that I met. (During the time that I attended West High School there were only a dozen or so Jewish students, and, in general, Minneapolis was an anti-Semitic town.) Since Rabbi Minda did not take my confession of atheism seriously, I was confirmed in the Jewish faith and became a member of the junior congregation. As such, I was asked to give a talk at a Friday evening service. I chose to discuss a book I had just read, Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth (1933), and I quoted her goal of “knowing something about everything, and everything about something.” I think I have fulfilled the first of this aspiration.

My parents subscribed to The Nation, wherein I read articles assuring me that unemployment insurance, health care for all, and other social welfare proposals were not socialistic or communistic. Why would that be so bad, I wondered, and at age thirteen set off for the public library to find out. Under the heading “socialism” I found Morris Hillquit’s History of Socialism in the United States and Friedrich Engels’s Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. I immediately became a convinced Marxist, and I passed up a chance to hear T. S. Eliot in favor of one Sam Davis who was running for governor of Minnesota on the Communist party ticket. At party headquarters I picked up a slew of pamphlets like “A Noon Hour Talk with the Communist Party.” I wrote a paper on American radical movements of the nineteenth century for a high school history class, but it got lost after the teacher lent it to a fellow student. I dropped out of high school at the end of my junior year and applied for admission to the University of Minnesota.

Education: Formal and Informal

Although my parents were in straitened circumstances, there was never any doubt about my attending the university. In the 1930s, residents of Minnesota paid only about twenty-five dollars a quarter, so tuition was not a hardship. The real problem in those Depression years was that families needed the help of their children to keep from going under financially. My father, who saw me as another Walter Lippmann, accompanied me when I visited the campus. The university administrators were taken aback at my request to enter the university without graduating from high school but admitted me on probation. My first year was filled with intellectual and social excitement, engaging with able, provocative teachers: Benjamin Lippincott in political theory, who assigned books like Richard Henry Tawney’s The Acquisitive Society (1920) and Beatrice Webb and Sidney Webb’s Industrial Democracy (1897); Castell in philosophy and logic; Minnich in zoology; Charles Bird in abnormal psychology; and Eugen Altschul in socialist economics. Somehow I got turned on to Thorstein Veblen, peppering my conversation with “pecuniary emulation,” “invidious comparison,” “vested interest,” “conspicuous consumption,” “idle curiosity,” and the rest of his catchy concepts. I read all his books and toyed with the idea of writing a biography of him, but Joseph Dorfman beat me to it. I also made the varsity debate team, a learning experience in how to take any side of a question. Encounters with more sophisticated students from Saint Paul were also stimulating. I was aware that there were a few feminists around, but I dismissed them as oddballs who insisted on racing men to doors and windows. I also disdained women’s organizations, like the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the National Council of Jewish Women, as bourgeois and supportive of the status quo. During my first year at the University of Minnesota, I went to hear Lucian Koch, the director of Commonwealth College, a labor college in Mena, Arkansas. The notion of becoming a labor organizer began to germinate. But there were other notions, too. A year or two earlier I had become friendly with a literary young man who introduced me not only to T. S. Eliot, Restoration comedy, and other hitherto unknown-to-me English writers, but also to Proust, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, and the symbolist movement. I felt that Eliot had written Prufrock just for me; even though it wasn’t coffee spoons I was measuring my life with. (Later I made extensive use of poetry in my sociology classes, especially that of the most sociological of poets, W.H. Auden. See, for example, his "Law Like Love” to spark a discussion of social control.) I also became hooked on Proust and read every word of his, mostly in translation, and everything about him I could find. Although I still have a bookcase of Proustiana, I have not been as meticulous as he in dredging up detail for this quick autobiography. Proust reappears later in my story.

After a year and a half at Minnesota I transferred to the University of Chicago to live with my parents, who had moved to Chicago. I decided to major in philosophy, especially Hindu philosophy. I supplemented my full-tuition scholarship with part-time jobs, such as cataloging the books in the personal library of a professor of public finance and catering private dinner parties. During the summer, I worked full-time as a bookkeeper in a jewelry store and as a stitcher of skirts in a cotton goods factory. This last job was taken with a view to becoming an organizer for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union; but I was fired after six weeks because I was unable to meet the piecework quota. After a quarter at the University of Chicago, only eighteen and acting on an impulse I don’t fully comprehend, I applied for admission to Commonwealth College—which my father called “Commonfilth”—and was accepted as their youngest student despite telegrams from my family urging them to reject me. Tuition, including board and room, was forty dollars a month plus twenty-five hours of work a week. I was apprenticed to Willie, the cook, who had been a member of the German Communist Party. Willie’s other helper, Jeff, was an anarchist; listening to their arguments was instructive. (I had read with great fascination Emma Goldman’s Living My Life, but knew I was not one “on bare knees to climb the volcanic hill.”)

At that time, the college was nonsectarian and all the extant proletarian parties were represented there. I took courses called “Imperialism and Fascism, History of Trade Unionism in the United States” and “Proletarian Literature.” I prepared a genealogy of the fifty-odd proletarian parties in the United States and I became romantically involved with a Trotskyite. On Saturday nights I square-danced with local farmers. I discovered, however, that I was an intellectual snob, like John Reed, who despised every communist who was not a Harvard graduate and every Harvard graduate who was not a communist—in the manner of Oscar Wilde’s more famous statement about wits and gentlemen. Why I had expected workers from southern mills and factories to join me in contemplating the bourgeois wasteland, I don’t know. Anyway, my tuition money ran out after three months, and I returned to the University of Chicago. At this time, a dissident group within the Socialist Party was flirting with a Trotskyite faction led by James P. Cannon (of Local 544 of truck drivers’ union fame) and Max Schachtman. In 1938, that faction became the Socialist Workers’ Party. In joining the left-wing youth group of the Socialist Party, the Yipsels (Young People’s Socialist League), in 1936, I was relieved of the necessity of choosing between reformism and revolution. In the Yipsels with me were such future greats as Saul Bellow, Oscar Tarcov, Herb Passin, George Reedy, Ithiel de Sola Poole, and Isaac Rosenfeld. I still remember the night a bunch of us spent at Isaac Rosenfeld’s listening to De Falla’s “Three Cornered Hat.” I was also active in the Workers’ Defense League. The C.I.O. was on the ascent, and I recall getting up very early on the morning of my final exams in order to be on the picket line of a strike by the Cap Makers’ Union.

I changed my major to economics in order to find out if Marx was right and was guided through the three volumes of Capital by Paul Douglas, discovering the famous contradiction of how market forces were brought in “behind the backs of the workers.” Our backs were sore from the whacks Douglas administered when he made an important point while pacing around the long seminar table. From Herbert Simon I learned that Marx as an economist was largely irrelevant, but that he could be admired as a sociologist. While an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, I took no course in sociology, although through independent study I did pass an examination on that subject. It was a philosophy course, “General Theory of Mind,” that set me on the path to sociology. The instructor, Charles Morris, suggested that I read Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia for the required book report. The sociology of knowledge solved a fundamental problem for me—how it was possible for someone to disagree with such a right-thinking person as myself without being either a fool or a knave. Many other remarkable professors at the University of Chicago remain in my memory: Mortimer Adler (great books), Richard McKeon (literary criticism), Frederick Schuman (international politics), Fay Cooper Cole (anthropology), and the boy-president himself, Robert M. Hutchins. This “mountain range of Gothic,” as Vincent Shean dubbed the university, was the field for the “battle of the books,” which overflowed the classroom into nearby beer halls. My chief learning from the University of Chicago was that anything not in Aristotle or Aquinas was either false or insignificant.

Bicoastal Experiences

As an adolescent in Minneapolis I had dreamed of leading a bohemian life in Greenwich Village. So, armed with an A.B in economics and the social sciences from the University of Chicago and on the basis of my experience in writing for the Chicago Daily Maroon and Soapbox, I sent letters to every New York-based publication from Boating Magazine to the Police Gazette, modestly offering to serve as editor. Although hardly shaking the big city loose from its underpinnings, I finally did land a job on The Advance, the publication of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. Besides reporting on labor matters, I prepared instructional materials for workers’ education classes. Many evenings were spent at party meetings followed by long discussions at Life Cafeteria in the Village. I noted, without the indignation of a raised consciousness, that men did most of the talking and that women changed their political outlook with their lovers. At the behest of the party, I became a soapbox orator, holding forth on housing, unemployment, and war, and rescuing the vegetables hurled at me for the dinner stew. Late hours took their toll, and I was fired from The Advance. My account of my dismissal cites Trotskyism, but according to my boss, J.B.S. Hardman, it was for being late to work.

Unemployment forced a return to the parental nest, now in Los Angeles. After a series of odd jobs, including one as a hypnotist’s accomplice, I went to work in 1939 as a case-aide for the California State Relief Administration. When one of my clients, angry at the cut in his check, pulled a gun on me, I disarmed him with an exhortation to join the union of people on relief. Party activities continued and Sunday mornings found me distributing leaflets to Japanese workers in Sawtelle, lecturing on the crisis of the middle class in San Diego, and, for a time, editing a publication for Mexican workers called La Lucha Obrera.

My sojourn in “warm Siberia” ended when, after passing a civil service exam for junior economist, I received a job offer from the Bureau of the Census. In Washington, D.C., my alienation from the party intensified. In Los Angeles, I had begun to prefer concerts over Red Card meetings. In the capital, I resented having to contribute half my salary to the party. The petty bourgeoisie in me preferred spending that money on graduate study, especially since my roommate, who had left to attend Columbia with a fellowship in economics, urged me to join her, assuring me of a similar fellowship. One course in public finance was, however, enough to confirm that I had lost my taste for economics. Accordingly, I had the chutzpah to ask Robert M. MacIver, then chair of the Sociology department, if I could trade my scholarship in economics for one in Sociology, which I considered the last refuge of the dilettante. MacIver was agreeable to subsidizing my tuition, but I still had to work full-time to support myself and so I had little time to hang around school and network. I did, though, have flexible hours with the North American Service of the BBC, for whom I wrote reports on American reactions to their broadcasts and on the contribution of American women to the war effort. I did this in spite of my personal opposition to the “imperialist war,” believing there were better ways of saving Jews and others from the Nazis.

Caste and Class in a Southern Town

In 1944, after completing the required sixty hours of course work for a Ph.D. in sociology, I registered with the employment bureau and was interviewed by Dean French of Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia, who confided that, never having had one, they were looking for a “nice Jew” to be on their faculty. I replied that I hoped they would find me so nice that they would hire more (indeed, Hilda Hertz succeeded me). I wasn’t, however, very nice. I was horrified, I told the students, by water fountains marked “white” and “colored,” at a drugstore clerk’s refusing a Negro woman a drink of water because they had run out of paper cups, by the lack of a hospital where a Negro doctor could take his patients. I encouraged my students, as young women of good will, to walk rather than ride the segregated bus. With a religion instructor, Emma-Lou Benignus, I took a group of students to an interracial conference in Durham, talked about the “white peril” in Lynchburg at the Methodist church, and heard that alumnae were threatening to cut off bequests to the college unless they got rid of this damn Yankee. Emma-Lou and I also managed to invite a group of Negro high school teachers to the annual Greek play, where they were seated next to carefully selected student buffers. I got a firsthand lesson in caste and class when, at a tea at my house afterward, they complained about the riffraff they had to teach.

Although I was opposed in principle to marriage as an institution oppressive of women, I was married at the end of my first year at Randolph-Macon. There was no way I could “live in sin” and remain on the faculty. I should have mentioned that although I had never taken a course in the family, it was assumed that as a woman I was fitted by nature to teach such a course. Amusingly, when it came time to impart sexual facts, Donald Taylor, who also taught a family course, added my class to his. Perhaps this delicacy on the part of the chair derived from my as yet unmarried state. My husband, Emanuel A. Hacker, kept house for us while working on his dissertation on the marginal utility of leisure. When he received an offer to teach economics at Brooklyn College, I left for New York with him. I got a job at the New School for Social Researchers as student adviser with teaching responsibility for one course, which in those pre-feminist days I called “Man in Relationship."

Academic Bites in the Big Apple

Permit me to backtrack a bit. Robert K. Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld supported the sociological firmament at Columbia during my sojourn there, prior to my teaching at Randolph-Macon. It was a “window of opportunity” for women, since most of the men either had been or were about to be drafted. Although Merton’s lectures had the elegance of a chess game, I chose Lazarsfeld and majored in public opinion and mass communications. Regrettably, I did not have the leisure to serve an apprenticeship under his tutelage at the Bureau for Applied Social Research. I wrote, however, a paper titled “The Ishmael Complex” (1952) for one of his courses. It was based on a content analysis of popular books for boys, and, in part, it exploited the black-woman analogy in explaining the camaraderie between white boys and their colored companions. Its publication provoked a host of angry letters to the editor and attacks in the Amsterdam News, all based on a complete misunderstanding of Sociology. For Merton I began, but never finished, a paper titled “Nietzsche’s Theory of Ideology,” which was finally published in an Indian journal (1970). Nietzsche succeeded Veblen and Proust as my third great hero.

Doctoral candidates were encouraged early on to give thought to their dissertations. Several of my attempts fell by the wayside. The first, “Social Structure in Proust,” was salvaged for a course in the sociology of literature that I co-taught at the Columbia School of General Studies. My second try was titled “Petticoats in the Pulpit.” I had fallen heir to a list of some two hundred women ministers ordained in four Protestant denominations concentrated largely in New England, and I thought I might interview them in depth about their experiences and problems. I hoped that Merton might agree that such a study would make a valuable contribution to the Sociology of occupations in exploring the paradox that the ministry, stereotyped as the most feminine of male occupations, was most closed to women. He did not, however, find the suggestion interesting. Years later, after many false starts, I finally wrote a Parsonian dissertation, which was accepted without revision and will be discussed below.

I had been poised to take my orals until a fellow student told me I was sure to fail; I cancelled. I was also aware that in those years the average time for getting the doctorate at Columbia was from ten to fifteen years. I was also told that things might go faster at Teachers College-Columbia University, and so, with the aid of a fellowship, I embarked on a program of study there and received a master’s degree in intergroup relations in 1949. Although in the end I did return to Columbia for my orals and doctorate, it was at Teachers College that I decided that every term paper should explore some theoretical problem in relation to women in the hope that these papers in combination might constitute a dissertation. So it was for Goodwin Watson that I wrote “Women as a Minority Group” (1951)1 and “Marx, Weber, and Pareto on the Changing Status of Women” (1953). At this time I was a non-tenure track faculty member at Hunter College, where I unsuccessfully proposed a course called “Conflicts of Modern Women.” In my social problems classes, I was also pushing the “Hacker Plan for the Reconstruction of Family Life,” a ten-point program emphasizing the need for part-time jobs on all skill levels and for mothers’ preference, similar to veterans’ preference, on civil service exams. (As men bear arms for the state, women bear children.) My tenth point gave women permission to marry down: If the prince can marry a shepherdess, then the princess can marry a goatherd.

In a way, not having a Ph.D. was an advantage. In those days the operating system at Hunter was known as the “fluid bottom” in that hardly anyone on a tenure track ever achieved it. Rather, after serving for three years, instructors were not renewed. As: a degree-less “temporary tutor” I could stay on indefinitely without raises or perks, but I was allowed to teach practically every course in the curriculum, including a graduate course in theory. Personal circumstances, however, impelled me to leave Hunter. My husband had been hospitalized for an indefinite period, and I needed much more money. Luckily, a friend brought me to Ernest Dichter’s Institute for Motivational Research at Croton-on-Hudson and, after a trial assignment of a “think piece” on the role of barbers in selling men’s hair products, I was hired. Thus began a fascinating apprenticeship in imaginative, qualitative research. Vance Packard didn’t name me in The Hidden Persuaders (1957), but I was responsible for the suggestion made to Duncan Hines that women should be asked to add their own egg to the cake mix. From the Institute I graduated to Young & Rubicam, an advertising agency, where the conversational level surpassed that on most college campuses. There I supervised a series of special market studies on Negroes, farmers, adolescents, and, most significantly, working wives.

I was permitted to add a page of my own on working wives to the agency’s Consumers’ Poll, with its national probability sample of four thousand men and women. These data served not only as the basis for advertising strategies but also provided the material for my dissertation, “A Functional Approach to the Gainful Employment of Married Women.” My study purported to explain why the large-scale employment of married women outside the home, like women’s suffrage, had had so little impact on the relations between men and women and the status of women in our society. It demonstrated that women’s attitudes toward work served to obviate any potential conflict between their jobs and the primacy of their family roles. I found that the majority of working wives did not seek to compete for jobs on an equal basis with men, but were satisfied with the connotations attached to merely holding a job.2 At last in 1961 (and aged forty-something) I became in my eyes the world’s oldest newly minted Ph.D.

The acquisition of a Ph.D. did not help to overcome my growing dissatisfaction with Young & Rubicam, but would, I hoped, provide a springboard for reentry into college teaching. Letters of application to Queens College and other schools, however, netted nothing. Women in their forties and lacking a male patron were not hired as assistant professors, or even instructors. I was taken on, however, by Ed Suchman as a resident in accident research for the New York City Department of Health. Among my duties was the ghoulish task of watching for near-accidents in playgrounds, schools for the deaf, and tunnels under the Hudson as background for writing research proposals. Although none of the proposals got funded, I did publish a theoretical article (1963). Concurrently, I conducted a research seminar and served as adviser on doctoral dissertations in the Teachers College department of home and family life. In this capacity, I helped policemen, rabbis, social workers, and others who had mindlessly collected data to ferret out questions that their data might answer. Gertrude Stein would have been pleased!

My Not So Dolce Vita in Italy

I had always dreamed of living in Italy: Bell'Italia, amate sponde, pur vi torno a riveder! I still have a postcard from my childhood sent to me by my Aunt Ada, who had been a friend of the Italian novelist and poet D’Annunzio, exhorting me to come to Italy even on my hands and knees like the pilgrims of old. So shortly after I had my Ph.D., and freed by divorce from marital responsibilities some years earlier, I applied for a postdoctoral Fulbright to conduct research on the family life of working mothers in northern Italy. Thus, in 1962 I traveled blissfully by freighter to Genoa. Random sampling was out of the question, but I gained access to operaii (blue-collar workers) and impiegati (white-collar workers) through personal contact with several important employers in Genoa. I was probably in more Italian homes than most Italians, and I quickly learned to plead fegato (liver trouble) to fend off repeated offers of sweet vermouth. Findings from intensive interviews with over a hundred husbands and wives in which I employed a Rashomon-like technique have been reported to various international conferences, but nothing ever found its way into print.

I spent a second year in Italy doing consumer research for several advertising agencies in Milan. One of my projects uncovered an interesting relationship between technology and the household division of labor. With the acquisition of a washing machine, the wife became the laundress because she didn’t trust the maid with the machine. Similarly, with the acquisition of a dishwasher, the husband took over from the wife. Of course that was thirty years ago, and I haven’t had a chance to check on more recent appliances like the microwave. I had obtained these assignments through the good offices of Francesco Alberoni, a Milan-based sociologist who also published several of my reviews and articles in the journal he edited, Studi di Sociologia. One of them, which attempted a definition of role conflict in modern women, paralleled to some extent Merton’s concepts of role-set and status-set (1965).

In 1964, I reluctantly returned to New York from Italy after receiving notice that carrying charges had begun on the co-op apartment that I had purchased in the blueprint stage. After another stint in motivational research, in 1966 I obtained a position as associate professor at Adelphi University through the then-chair of the department of sociology, Robert Endleman, whom I had met at a cocktail party.3

Song of India

The fall of 1969 found me, on leave of absence from Adelphi, at the University of Bangalore in South India on another Fulbright fellowship as a visiting professor. I taught graduate courses in the family and field research methods, and it is not altogether complimentary to my students that I learned much more from them than they did from me. While I tried to encourage them in sociological ways of thinking about the social problems that beset India, they were orienting me to India in matters small and large. In the beginning, there were lessons in sari-draping before class; my highest mark in this endeavor was B+. Then I was invited to weddings, dance recitals, religious lectures, tabla (drum) and sitar concerts, picnics, and above all to their homes. (When they came to mine, I escorted the women home in an auto-rickshaw.) Perhaps it was the eager hospitality and openness of my students that gave me the illusion that I shared in their world. Indeed, it seemed that time past and time future were present in India. Strangely, it was my very immersion in Hinduism—I spent some time at the Pondicherry ashram—that brought me to a new appreciation of Judaism. Acres of diamonds in my own backyard!

Although my primary purpose in India was to teach, I also engaged in research, both planned and serendipitous. The former was an adaptation to the Indian scene of my Italian questionnaire. English is the language of instruction in Indian universities, so my students were able to translate the questionnaire into whichever of the some twenty-six languages they also spoke and to conduct interviews in it with Indians who did not know English. After I resumed my duties in the States, the data were farmed out to Adelphi students for master’s essays.

I have already hinted at the pervasive sexual and nonsexual harassment of Indian women called “Eve-teasing.” Women students were afraid to go alone to the library at night. After graduation, they were escorted to and from their jobs by male relatives or husbands. I sent a letter protesting this situation to the local paper, the Deccan Herald, signed only H. Hacker, which provoked a prolific, largely negative response. Many of the letter writers assumed I was a foreign man seeking to corrupt the purity of Indian womanhood. The letter’s editor of the Deccan Herald gave me all the letters and subsequently published my content analysis of them. The whole exchange became a minor cause célèbre that outlasted my stay in India as indicated by the headline “WOMAN: DEVI [goddess] OR DOLL: Hacker and After.” On my lecture circuit in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, sponsored by the U.S. Information Service, many women expressed appreciation of my modest efforts on their behalf. For me, India abounded in wondrous experiences, but the most enchanting was hearing a nightingale outside my mission window in Rajshahi just before dawn.

At the end of my Fulbright year, and somewhat unwillingly, I returned to New York via Indonesia and Japan just in time for the mighty march celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the woman’s suffrage amendment. In consonance with my long-time interest in the study of women and my commitment to the women’s movement, I had joined NOW in 1966 in response to an invitation from Pauli Murray, a founding member and the first African American woman to be ordained a priest of the Episcopal Church. She had previously been a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and our friendship had begun after she had telephoned me out of the blue to say that she had used my “Women as a Minority Group” in a brief before a federal court contesting the exclusion of women from jury duty in three southern states. I had also gotten in on the ground floor of Sociologists for Women in Society. In fall 1970, I offered a course in “Women’s Liberation” at Adelphi, which elicited long and impassioned term papers from the women students. In subsequent years, in order to bring men in, the title was changed to “The Social Roles of Men and Women;” ultimately it became “The Sociology of Gender.” I also pioneered a course named “Sexuality in Sociological Perspective.”

A sabbatical from Adelphi in 1974 provided an opportunity for visiting Israel, where I substituted for Dorit Padan-Eisenstark at the University of the Negevin Beer Sheba while she was occupied with a project in Jerusalem. We were collaborating on a pilot study of marital power in four Israeli institutional frameworks: the kibbutz; the “regular” moshav; an intermediate form known as the moshav shitufi, which combined equality of income with traditional family patterns; and the private sector. These four structures constituted a continuum along which the key variables of family and work arrangements varied systematically. For purposes of observation and interviewing, I was invited by Menachem Rosner, a noted Israeli sociologist, to spend a week at his kibbutz, Reshafim. I then moved on to Regba, as representative of the moshavim shitufim (small landholders’ collective settlements) for another week.

Our conclusions included two propositions: First, until men are drawn into child care and service occupations, job segregation, with lower prestige for women’s work, will persist; and, second, even when wives are not economically dependent on their husbands, they retain an inferior social position in a male-dominated community. Back in the United States, I devoted months to grant applications to the Ford Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for a research project based on our pilot study. It was never funded, possibly because of the modesty of the request and the evaluators’ lack of sympathy for Israel. Amusingly, the first proposal I wrote, “The Socio-Economic Context of Sex and Power: A Study of Women, Work, and Family Roles in Four Israeli Institutional Frameworks,” was published in an anthology edited by Florence Denmark (1976). A paper, “Cognitive Dissonance and Choice of Reference Group: The Case of Women and Work in the Moshav Shitufi,” was rejected by the American Sociological Review with the suggestion that I submit it to a journal dealing with sex roles, perhaps indicating minimal mainstream interest in integrating studies of women’s experiences into sociological theory.

Finding My Birth Family

In March, 1969, I went to my hometown of Minneapolis as a delegate to the annual meeting from the Adelphi chapter of the American Association of University Professors. There my research skills paid off: I found my birth family. The high drama of that encounter I reserve for another context, and I say here only that suddenly I acquired four brothers and four sisters, all but one older than I. It saddens me that I missed meeting my birth mother by only two years. My father, though, had been long dead. Both had been born in Odessa. Poverty had forced them to give me up, but the trauma had been so great for my mother that they kept my youngest, equally unwanted sister. Over the past twenty-some years, I have formed strong bonds with this second family and am continually celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, Bar and Bat-Mitzvot, weddings, and so on. In 1977, I led a workshop on the adoptee experience at the Groves Conference on Marriage and the Family. At present I am involved with three families, since even though I am divorced from his uncle, Andrew Hacker continues to regard me as his favorite aunt.

The Recent Past

In 1984 I took early retirement from Adelphi. Since then I have been teaching one course a semester at the New School for Social Research, alternating among my current interests in religion, sexuality, and the impact of feminist scholarship on the social sciences.

In my end was my beginning. I seem to have returned to my early concern with philosophy, and I now regularly read Hypatia and similar journals. It was at the Non-Governmental Organization Forum before the UN Decade for Women Conference in 1985 in Nairobi that I first heard myself say that my current interest was feminist epistemology. I now have a formidable library on the subject. At an International Sociological Association conference in Trento, Italy, in June, 1992, I made a presentation on feminist methodology. Then there are lesser flights of fancy, like my frequently given talk with musical illustrations, “Women’s Plights in Opera Plots: Fantasies of Male Librettists."

Apologia pro Mea Vita

Shall we look at my story as oral history, cautionary tale, or just personal memoir? In reflecting on my sociological career, what can I say I have accomplished? Like most teachers, I have spent hours in student hand-holding; have recruited young people into sociology, most notably, Bennett Berger, who has often told me that I “turned him on to sociology;” and have labored interminably with graduate students. I have written countless letters of recommendation, marched and demonstrated for women’s and other worthy causes, testified in Albany and Washington D.C., about discrimination against women, acted as outside reader for dissertations written both in the United States and in India, served on professional committees, written dozens of painstaking critiques of papers submitted to professional journals, done duty as reference librarian for friends and colleagues on a wide range of subjects, addressed graduate colloquia, participated in radio and television programs, and more.

Although I have contributed chapters to several books, in one case amounting to half the volume, I have not published a book. (The covers of The Social Roles of Women and Men (1975) were too close together to merit that designation.) My vita is eclectic as well as hectic. The articles (twenty-one), book reviews (sixteen), and presentations at professional meetings (thirty) roam the sociological spectrum rather than mining one vein. In the main, my sociological work bears witness to my lifelong interest in the problem of redefining gender roles and restructuring the power relationships between women and men in a manner to maximize human potential. I have addressed this question on both the social and the psychological levels—that is, by investigating the interrelationships among such dominant institutions of our society as the family, the economy, legal and political systems, and the church, on the one hand, and the impact of these institutions on the motivations and self-concepts of individuals, on the other.

Although I have to my credit a few major articles, my contributions might have been much more substantial. I have always been more of a gadfly than a solid scholar. I am attracted to unpopular causes and outsiders, people on the margin (1971b). It is axiomatic to say that my paucity of publications can be attributed to an interaction of environmental, accidental, and characterological factors. I have always been out of sync: entering graduate school a few years older than was customary at the time, completing my Ph.D. as a middle-aged woman, spouting ideas whose time had not come. As mentioned earlier, in my youth, women needed male sponsors and I had neither the time nor the inclination to acquire one. I should say, however, that all my jobs and most of my invitations to present at professional meetings came from personal contacts, mostly male.4

On the characterological side, there was the nagging doubt as to whether what I was doing was worth any great investment. Also, I have been a peculiar combination of quick study and obsessive-compulsive attender to detail. Call it grandiosity, but there was always one more book or article to be read, one more anticipated counterargument to be taken care of, before closure could be achieved. Often it was more interesting to move on to a new enthusiasm or to throw off a think piece for others to substantiate. Brainstorming is more fun than fact gathering. Lack of discipline looms large. I never wanted to give up anything—concert, play, opera, party, lecture, seminar—because of fundamental uncertainty that the sacrifice would pay off.

Feminism has always been the beacon that I follow even as its trajectory changes. It is difficult now to recollect in tranquility just what propelled me along different paths. Overall, like so many others, I have been concerned with the causes of women’s subordination. In reflecting on the failure of those modern societies officially committed to the liberation of women, such as the Israeli kibbutzim, the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, Cuba, and Sweden, to implement sex equality, I speculated that, in addition to their special circumstances, a pervasive traditional counter-ideology, stemming from religion, persisted. For the past decade or so, I have been interested in the pursuit of strategies to transform the religious substrate of primordial images of masculinity and femininity and, in addition to writing in this area (1983, 1984), have offered a course at the New School for Social Research titled “Men’s Rites; Women’s Rights: Sociological and Feminist Perspectives on Religion."

Quo Vadis?

What next? Shall I cultivate my garden, or which, if any, of my unfinished projects that fill ten file cases shall I try to complete? Polish the paper “Outing versus Coming Out” given at the 1992 meeting of the Society for the Study of Social Problems? Develop the play based on the life of Frances Wright? Deliver the coup de grace in the argument about matriarchy or the best definition of marital power? Distill more articles from the in-depth interview study of same-sex and cross-sex friendship dyads that so far has yielded only one published (1981) and one unpublished paper (1978)? Revise and resubmit the analysis of the situation of women in Regba, a collective settlement in Israel? Look over the transcriptions of my Italian interviews? Go beyond the two chapters of the update of my dissertation based on new survey data that I had completed before Harper and Row—not the first publisher to do so—canceled my book contract? Try to integrate into a book my lecture notes for the course dealing with the impact of feminist scholarship on the social sciences? “Decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.” Or shall the aged eagle spread its wings and fly off in some new direction?

No matter. At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that under the terms of my will a fellowship will be established in my name at the University of Minnesota to provide one year, or possibly two, of subsidy to a promising graduate student, who has completed all the course requirements for the Ph.D., to work full-time on a dissertation that will contribute to feminist scholarship.

Notes

1 A revised and updated version of this essay was published in 1974.

2 This finding is clarified and elaborated in my article “The Feminine Protest of the Working Wife” (1971a). The title alludes to Adler’s concept of “masculine protest.” In effect, the working wives in my study say, “Even though I work like a man, I am still a woman—and a good wife and mother.”

3 It may be of historical interest to note that my beginning and continuing salary was substantially less than that of the average male assistant professor at Adelphi. Some years later, and without any intervention on my part, I was identified by Committee W of the American Association of University Professors as the most discriminated against woman at Adelphi and given a raise of $2,000.

4 For example, “The New Burdens of Masculinity” (1957) was originally a paper on role conflicts of men that was commissioned by Nelson Foote, a family sociologist, for a meeting of the Groves Conference on Marriage and the Family.

References

Hacker, Helen Mayer. 1951. “Women as a Minority Group.” Social Forces 30(1): 60-69. No. S-108 in the Bobbs Merrill Reprint Series in Sociology.

------. 1952. “The Ishmael Complex.” American Journal of Psychotherapy 6(3): 393-512.

------. 1953. “Marx, Weber, and Pareto on the Changing Status of Women.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 12(2): 149-62.

------. 1957. “The New Burdens of Masculinity.” Marriage and Family Living 19: 227-33.

------. 1963. “A Sociological Approach to Accident Research.” Social Problems 10(4): 383-89.

------. 1965. “Verso Una Definizione dei Conflitti di Ruolo nelle Donne Moderne.” Studi di Sociologia 3(3): 332-41.

------. 1970. “Nietzsche and the Ideology of Greek Tragedy.” Daystar: Social, Cultural, and Literary Magazine 2(4): 17-30.

------. 1971a. “The Feminine Protest of the Working Wife.” Indian Journal of Social Work 31(4): 403-6.

------. 1971b. “Homosexuals: Deviant or Minority Group?” Pp. 65-92 in The Other Minorities, edited by Edward Sagarin. Waltham, MA: Ginn and Company.

------. 1974. “Women as a Minority Group: Twenty Years Later.” International Journal of Group Tension 9(1): 122-32.

------. 1975. The Social Roles of Women and Men: A Sociological Approach. New York: Harper and Row.

------. 1976. “The Socio-Economic Context of Sex and Power: A Study of Women, Work, and Family Roles in Four Israeli Institutional Frameworks.” Pp. 579-600 in Women, vol. 1: A PDI Research Reference, edited by Florence L. Denmark. New York: Psychological Dimensions.

------. 1977. “Problems in Defining and Measuring Marital Power Cross-Culturally.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 285: 646-52.

------. 1978. “The Influence of Gender Roles on Reciprocal Ratings in Same-Sex and Cross-Sex Friendship Dyads.” Paper presented at the Ninth World Congress of Sociology, Uppsala, Sweden.

------. 1981. “Blabbermouths and Clams: Sex Differences in Self-Disclosure in Same-Sex and Cross-Sex Friendship Dyads.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 5(3): 385-401.

------. 1983. “Women and Islam: Dilemmas of Muslim Feminists.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Knoxville, Tenn.

------. 1984. “Towards a Feminist Reformation of Biblical Religion.” New England Sociologist 5(1): 23-36.

II. Work and Family

I always knew [I was adopted], I don’t remember ever having been told…. I think that made me feel different all along—self-conscious—and I remember very clearly skating and a friend of mine, Maxine Jacobson, asking me, “were you adopted?” And that had a stigma in Minneapolis, when I was young. I didn’t answer her, I just skated away…. I have two birth certificates, one says February 9th and the other says February 19th.

This section includes Dr. Hacker’s academic work on gender, work, and family. This work was shaped by her positionality as an adopted child, a young Jewish woman who opposed the oppressiveness of marriage as an institution, and later a divorcee traveling to Italy as a Fulbright scholar. Helen spoke candidly with us about the joys and difficulties in her childhood, her experiences as an adoptee, and how family life influenced her social and intellectual trajectory. Despite never taking a class on the sociology of family, Hacker found herself teaching her first family course at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (now Randolph College) in the mid-1940s. In her “Slouching Toward Sociology” essay included above, Hacker recalled that “it was assumed that as a woman I was fitted by nature to teach such a course. Amusingly, when it came time to impart sexual facts, Donald Taylor, who also taught a family course, added my class to his. Perhaps this delicacy on the part of the chair derived from my as yet unmarried state.”

The topics of her writing in these areas range from shifting expectations of husbands and fathers in the United States to cross-cultural definitions and conceptualizations of family roles. Scholars today continue to grapple with these intersections of gender, work, and family, developing concepts like “work-family balance” and the “second shift” to better theorize the institutional and cultural challenges that Hacker highlighted. Sociologists’ measurement of family structures has also changed dramatically over time, opening up consideration of more varied and diverse family forms. The questions and challenges Hacker raised remain relevant within current academic and political discussions.

We have included five publications in this section. “The New Burdens of Masculinity” (1957) calls for attention to how shifting relations between men and women in the workplace and at home led men to experience uncertainty, frustration, and even anger. Twenty years later, Hacker published a short follow-up piece titled “Men’s Attitudes Toward Gender Role Issues.” Here, she categorizes subsequent research and social commentary on the topic written during the 1960s and 1970s, ending with a call for more empirical examinations of contemporary men’s attitudes.

Hacker’s third article in this section, “The Feminine Protest of the Working Wife,” was published in 1971, though the data for this project were collected in 1958. As an employee at the advertising agency Young & Rubicam, Hacker added questions on working wives to the company’s nationally representative Consumers’ Poll. This became the source of data for her dissertation, “A Functional Approach to the Gainful Employment of Married Women,” as well as her 1971 article, included here, which finds that both working mothers and housewives in the late 1950s rejected stereotypes associated with their respective roles.

During a sabbatical from Adelphi University in 1974, Hacker traveled to Israel and collaborated with Dorit Padan-Eisenstark on a pilot study of four institutional contexts with varied work and family arrangements. After returning to the United States, she submitted grant applications to the Ford Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health to continue this work, but the project was never funded. Here we include Hacker’s first research proposal, titled “The Socio-Economic Context of Sex and Power: A Study of Women, Work and Family Roles in Four Israeli Institutional Frameworks,” which was published in a 1976 anthology.

The final piece in this section is Hacker’s 1977 article, “Problems in Defining and Measuring Marital Power Cross-Culturally.” In it she tackles the difficult question of how to define and measure power between spouses in different cultural contexts. After researching family dynamics in the United States, Italy, India, and Israel, she uses her work on Moshav Shitufi in Israel as a case study to demonstrate how existing frameworks can be modified to help understand this unique context.

Section Contents

Helen M. Hacker. 1957. “The New Burdens of Masculinity.” Marriage and Family Living 19(3): 227-233.

Helen M. Hacker. 1976. “Men’s Attitudes Toward Gender Role Issues.” Pages 36-38 in Sexuality Today and Tomorrow, edited by Sol Gordon & Roger W. Libby. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

Helen M. Hacker. 1971. “The Feminine Protest of the Working Wife.” The Indian Journal of Social Work XXXI(4): 403-406.

Helen M. Hacker. 1976. “The Socio-Economic Context of Sex and Power: A Study of Women, Work and Family Roles in Four Israeli Institutional Frameworks.” Pp. 579-600 in Women—Volume I, A PDI Research Reference Work, edited by Florence L. Denmark. Psychological Dimensions, Inc.

Helen M. Hacker. 1977. “Problems in Defining and Measuring Marital Power Cross-Culturally.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 285: 646-652.

The New Burdens of Masculinity

Helen M. Hacker Originally published 1957

In the field of intergroup relations it has often been ruefully remarked that there is no Negro problem, but only a white problem, no Jewish problem, but a Gentile problem; in short, no minority group problem, but a dominant group problem. And the problem of the dominant group was not only that its attitudes perpetuated the minority group, but also placed limitations on its own development. Amusingly enough, when men are the dominant group, they are quick to admit that their chief problem is women. This answer may be in part defensive, in part facetious, but it is true that inadequate attention has been paid to the sociology of dominant groups, and the strains imposed by the burdens of their status.

Indeed interest and research in changes in men’s social roles have been eclipsed by the voluminous concentration on the more spectacular developments and contradictions in feminine roles, and changes in masculine roles have been treated largely as a reaction and adjustment to the new status of women. Possibly one reason why masculine social roles have not been subjected to scrutiny is that such a concept has not clearly emerged. Men have stood for mankind, and their problems have been identified with the general human condition. It is a plausible hypothesis, however, that men, as well as women, suffer from the lack of a generally accepted, clearly defined pattern of behavior expected of them, and that their interpretation of the masculine role varies according to individual personality needs and social situations. The massive social changes initiated by the Industrial Revolution have not only affected the complementariness of the sexes, but posed new problems of personality fulfillment for both men and women.

Analytically, contemporary masculine problems may be viewed as arising from three sources, which may prove difficult to disentangle. First, we may consider those burdens of masculinity which have survived from earlier periods, but which modern conditions may have aggravated. Men in their traditional role of breadwinners have always encountered difficulties, but it may be that recent developments in our occupational structure have added new tensions. Pertinent to this problem would be studies of occupational mobility and the increasing importance of education as both barrier and base to economic success, [and] of vocational adjustment and the new personality traits, such as skill in politicking, needed for high-level positions. We will return to this theme later on, when the worker role will be taken up explicitly. Then, too, from Adam on, men have had their troubles with women, but can we distinguish the enduring from the variable in their complaints?

Secondly, it may be useful to distinguish conflicts engendered by feelings of inadequacy in fulfilling role expectations from those stemming from feelings of uncertainty, ambiguity, or confusion regarding role expectations. A man may have no doubts concerning the criteria of masculinity, but feel that he does not live up to them, or he may be unsure concerning the requirements for validating manhood. Preliminary interview materials reveal that the ideal man is considered by men as being, among other things, a good provider, the ultimate source of knowledge and authority, and strong in character so that he may give a feeling of security, not only financially but emotionally, to his wife and children, and it was evident from their further responses that the respondents found themselves deficient in meeting these demands.

The norms of masculinity, however (and, conversely, those of effeminacy) may vary among social groups, and multiple group participations may set up contradictions and inconsistencies in outlook. For example, it was only after several months of counseling that a skilled mechanic developed the courage to dust off some old Caruso records he had stored in the attic, and find that listening to them was no threat to his manhood. The group memberships of a professional man, however, would hardly produce this particular conflict.

The third source or way of examining the problematic aspects of masculine social roles is interpreting them in terms of accommodation to the new freedoms and responsibilities of women. Here again we may look with profit to the minority group literature. Horace R. Cayton has spoken of the guilt-hate-fear complex of whites in regard to Negroes. He says:

Guilt, because his treatment of the American Negro is contrary to all of his higher impulses¼. But having such guilt and being unable and unwilling to resolve it, persons learn to hate the object they feel guilty about so the guilt turns to hate and with it the necessity to rationalize and justify their behavior. Finally there is fear, for the white man in all of his arrogance knows that in spite of his rationalizations about racial inferiority he would be resentful and strike back if treated the way he treats Negroes.1

Perhaps I would not press this analogy, if several men had not told me themselves that in their eyes men have guilt feelings about the whole history of male-female relationships, and that while the “emotionally stable” man was attempting to work out a new, more equitable pattern, neurotic men succumbed to the other elements in the complex by striving to stand firm on traditional male prerogatives or going too far in their subservience to women. Again, in the matter of social distance, some men are willing to admit their occasional need of exclusive male companionship, while others are afraid to recognize it. Some find friendship with women enjoyable, while others are as uneasy with “intellectual” women as the white Southerner with educated Negroes.

In fact the chief obstacle so far experienced in efforts to collect data as a basis for the formulation of precise hypotheses has been men’s reticence, which may be attributed in part, as mentioned previously, to the lack of cultural focus of attention on men’s problems, as revealed in the defensive answer, “women.” More important, though, is an element of the traditional masculine role which proscribes admission and expression of psychological problems, feelings, and general overt introspection, as summed up in the stereotype of the strong, silent man. True he may be permitted moments of weakness, some faltering in his self-appointed task, when he falls back on a woman for emotional support, but such support is in the nature of ego-building rather than direct participation and counsel. The ideal American male personality has been described by John Gillin2 as a “redblooded, gentlemanly, go-getter” and any confessions of doubts, uncertainties, or insecurities would tarnish this image, any sign of weakness might be taken for effeminacy. Perhaps this is the greatest burden of masculinity our culture imposes.

Nevertheless, there are objective indices that all is not well with men. Most obvious is the widespread expression of resentment toward women in conversation, plays, novels, and films. Modern women are portrayed as castrating Delilahs busily levelling men’s individuality and invading the strongholds of masculinity in work, play, sex, and the home. She seems to say, with Ethel Merman, to the man, “Everything you can do, I can do better.” She is the female insect who devours her lover (“The Cage”), the shrike who preys on her husband; she is a storehouse of evil desires, she constantly puts men to tests they cannot meet, she compels their submission. In the words of Oscar Wilde, women are seen as a brimming reservoir of all kinds of powers: physical, mental, moral, legal. In the comic strips, husbands and fathers are the guileless tools of their wives and daughters. To change Congreve’s phrase in The Way of the World, many men seem to see themselves as dwindling into a husband or other female appendage. Other indices, to be discussed later, are the increasing social visibility of impotence and homosexuality.

In seeking a conceptual model in which to cast masculine role problems, Kirkpatrick’s3 discussion of cultural inconsistencies in marital roles may be of service. He distinguished among three roles provided in our society for the married woman, each role implying certain privileges and certain obligations, and suggested that conflict might arise from the disposition of the wife to claim the privileges of more than one role without accepting its corresponding obligations, or from the disposition of the husband to expect his wife to assume the duties of more than one role without receiving its corresponding rights. This situation may be ascribed to social forces operating differentially on the American population, thus leading to a multiplicity of roles, no one of which has universal sanction and [is], consequently, not clearly isolated from the others.

Let us try to apply this notion of ethical inconsistency to some of the main statuses which men occupy in our society.

As a man, men are now expected to demonstrate the manipulative skill in interpersonal relations formerly reserved for women under the headings of intuition, charm, tact, coquetry, womanly wiles, et cetera. They are asked to bring patience, understanding, gentleness to their human dealings. Yet with regard to women they must still be sturdy oaks. As I heard on the radio recently, a woman wants a man to be “big and strong, sensitive and tender, the sort of person on whom you can rely, and who leaves you free to manage things the way you want.” This contradiction is also present in men’s relationships with men. As Riesman4 points out in The Lonely Crowd, now that the “softness of the personal” has been substituted for the “hardness of the material” men must be free with the glad hand, they must impress others with their warmth and sincerity (rather than as formerly with their courage and honesty and industry), they must be troubleshooters on all fronts. Yet they are not thereby relieved of the necessity of achieving economic success or other signal accomplishment, nor are they permitted such catharses as weeping, fits of hysterics, and obvious displays of emotionalism. Of course, it may be objected that as women are increasingly allowed male privileges, they, too, are restricted in their emotional expression. Yet in the present era of transition women may still, on the basis of the unpredictability of their sex, which is vaguely linked to biological functioning, have greater recourse to moodiness and irrationality.

In the status of husband, a man must assume the primary responsibility for the support of the home. A man who marries for money is exposed to more social opprobrium than a woman, and there is scant social support for the expectation that the wife should shoulder half the financial burden. The self-respecting male has no choice but to work. Rarely do marriage and homemaking offer an alternative! Yet his responsibility does not end there. Although he should excel his wife in “external creativity” he is also called upon to show some competence in “internal creativity” in developing the potentialities of the husband-wife relationship, and sharing the physical and policymaking burdens of maintaining the home. Or in Parsonian language,5 his specialization as “instrumental leader” does not preclude the assumption of “expressive” functions, particularly in view of the growing emphasis on friendship between husband and wife.

As a father, he bears the chief responsibility in law for the guardianship of the children, but often in practice plays a subordinate role. He may wistfully long for or stormily demand the respect of his children, but his protracted absence from the home makes it easy for them to evade his authority and guidance. Moreover, he is increasingly reproached for his delinquencies as a father. He is urged to strengthen his friendly, democratic relationship to his family without in any way lessening the primacy of his occupational role, though he is made to feel guilty for his efforts to support the home to the extent that they remove him from it. Indeed, the conflict between home and job is more salient and universal for men than for women. He has lost the security of the old paterfamilias, who was the autocrat of the breakfast table, and experiences difficulties in establishing a satisfying new role. That father is hard put to it to find his rightful place in the home is starkly summarized in the comment of the comic strip character, Penny, on the ambiguity of the father role, “We always try to make father feel he is a part of the family.”

Father is no longer the chief mediator between the outside world and his family. As Gunnar Dybwad6 has said,

While formerly the father carried prestige because he, largely, was the connecting link to community affairs, now radio and TV, women’s clubs and school organized activities have greatly lessened his importance in this respect. Moreover, with increasing mechanization, his maintenance concerns in everyday household affairs have decreased.

He may feel outnumbered in PTA organizations where mother is the parent most often represented. His absorption in work cuts him adrift from the new patterns of child development. It is mother who reads the child psychology books, accompanies the child to the guidance counselor, consults with teachers, and participates in community child projects.

Dr. Leo Bartemeier7 has pointed to a further conflict in the father role. In accordance with the cultural ideal of the he-man, fathers may feel that to be loving and gentle is consciously or unconsciously regarded as psychological failure, and indeed it may be difficult to make the transition from the attitude of ruggedness and toughness developed in schools, businesses, colleges, teams, and clubs to “the guiding light of paternal solicitude, love, and affection.”

The requirements of the father role are further obscured by recent over-emphasis on the mother-child relationship, especially in infancy. (See, for example, Talcott Parsons, Family: Socialization and Interaction Process.) Father is relegated to the role of mother-substitute or nursery assistant, and receives little help in becoming an effective member of the parent team.

As a son, he may face more obstacles to emotional maturity than a daughter. The dangers of “Momism” and the female conscience have been much propagandized.8 Exposed almost exclusively to the influence of women as mothers, teachers, and sisters the growing boy may identify goodness with femininity. Presumably the immediacy and comparative simplicity of the mother’s role in the home is more readily grasped by the daughter, but the son finds difficulty in identifying with the largely absentee father and is cut off from his occupational role. His mother wants him to be an all-round boy and is fearful lest he be a sissy, but she cannot show him what it is to be masculine. This he must learn in the peer groups of the youth culture so strangely detached from the adult world. Ruth Benedict’s9 comments on discontinuities in cultural conditioning apply with perhaps more force to boys than to girls. The personality traits which are rewarded in childhood do not bring approval in the peer group, nor are the values of the latter always conducive to success in the adult world of college and business. Arnold Green10 in his much-quoted “The Middle-Class Male Child and Neurosis” shows how the blind obedience and “love” for his parents which brings surcease from anxiety and guilt are ineffective in competitive relationships outside the family in which independent and aggressive behavior is demanded. Integration of the conflicting roles of dependence and submission inside the home with self-assertiveness outside the home is difficult because of the guilt feelings aroused for either violating the initial submissive adjustment or for not making the effort to achieve. So the son may envy his sister’s more protected role, because, although he is permitted greater freedom, more is expected of him in the way of achievement, responsibility, emotional control, and autonomy. To the extent that cultural expectations of masculine superiority persist, boys may resent invidious comparisons to their sisters and other girls in the matters of scholarship and social skills. Also to be mentioned is the greater social acceptability girls find in being tomboys than boys who incline to interests labelled feminine. One of my students reported that he wanted to skip rope as a child, and finally got social permission by saying he was practicing to be a prizefighter. Additional problems are posed by the earlier maturation of girls.

We turn now to a consideration of men in the status of lover. In one sense this role strikes at the heart of the problem of masculinity. The ability to perform the sexual act has been a criterion for man’s evaluation of himself from time immemorial. Virility used to be conceived as a unilateral expression of male sexuality, but is regarded today in terms of the ability to evoke a full sexual response on the part of the female. Men as the dominant group feel the strains of accommodating to the changing status of the minority group, and meeting the challenge presented by the sexual emancipation of women. Much as whites who feel constrained to convince Negroes of their feelings of friendliness and fair play, men seek from women the assurance that they are satisfied, and may become hurt and resentful when women play the part of psychological Lysistratas refusing to admit complete gratification.

The urgency of the problem of impotence may arise also from the psychological need to buttress masculinity in the one area safe from female competition, and it may also be that sexual prowess represents an alternative to economic success in validating manhood. Any deficiencies in this realm, therefore, are much more ego-threatening to men than to women. Sexual adequacy affects the relationship of men not only to women, but also to other men. Sexual contests may be important for standing in the peer group, and boys who have no exploits to recount may feel constrained to counterfeit them.

In general, it can be said that masculinity is more important to men than femininity is to women, and that sexual performance is more inextricably linked to feelings of masculine self-worth than even motherhood is to women. As stated previously, our cultural heritage has identified masculine with human, and both men and women aspire to masculine values. A dramatic corroboration of this hypothesis was made by Terman and Miles11 when they found in administering their test of mental masculinity and femininity to students at the University of Chicago that the scores of both men and women shifted toward the masculine end of the continuum after the subjects had been informed of the purpose of the test. If a man is not masculine, not a “real man,” he is nothing. But a woman can be unfeminine, and still be a person. There is a neuter category for women, but not for men.

The “flight from masculinity” evident in male homosexuality may be in part a reflection of role conflicts. If it is true that heterosexual functioning is an important component of the masculine role in its social as well as sexual aspects, then homosexuality may be viewed as one index of the burdens of masculinity. First, because of confusion of social and sexual role, as Margaret Mead12 long ago pointed out in Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, in societies which differentiate strongly between masculine and feminine social roles, individuals who manifest personality traits ascribed to the opposite sex or who feel inadequate in fulfilling their part of the sexual division of labor may become confused in their sexual identification, and feel that they must also change their sexual object. Thus, the feelings of our mechanic who feared listening to Caruso records may be interpreted as a fear of homosexuality. Abram Kardiner13 in his Sex and Morality has elaborated this theme:

The difficulty in our society is that role expectations exercise an influence on sexual activity, sometimes in unexpected ways. The association of money, economic power and prestige with sexual potency or bodily stature is notorious. Money is a common form of the vindication of manliness; by the same token, absence of money may crush the feeling of manliness.

Kardiner further suggests that homosexuality represents a rerouting of aggression and hostility perhaps in response to heightened social demands—from women and competitors. He goes on to say:

These are the men who are overwhelmed by the increasing demands to fulfill the specifications of masculinity and who flee from competition because they fear the increased pressure on what they consider their very limited resources... This kind of man can get no comfort from the female because she is a threat to him, not a solace, because she expected him to be masculine. The best he can do is to settle for a compromise on sensual satisfaction without further commitment.

It would be a matter of empirical investigation to establish a typology of men, perhaps according to family constellation or social class position, in terms of their interpretation of the demands of masculinity and their felt capacity to fulfill them, possibly along the lines that Merton14 has suggested in his article “Social Structure and Anomie.” A greater range of feminine than masculine types seems available in our society, as suggested by such superficial indices as modes of dress and manner. Significantly, no typology of “masculine” personalities has been advanced, such as Helene Deutsch’s15 categorization of women.

By implication, if not directly, in the foregoing we have referred to men’s occupational role, and we may now turn explicitly to this area. The problems which men, more than women, experience on the job have already been mentioned: (1) the greater compulsion to success, if not from themselves, then from their wives; (2) the lack of an alternative to gainful employment; (3) the identification of economic success with masculinity (one woman of my acquaintance has told me that a man’s success is an important component of his sex appeal, both directly and indirectly; that men who feel themselves failures lack confidence in their dealings with women); (4) the new need for politicking or using traditionally feminine forms of behavior for ingratiating superiors, customers, et cetera; and (5) the feeling of being threatened by women in industry, who are seen as limiting opportunities for men, diminishing the prestige of jobs formerly held only by men, and casting a cold eye on masculine pretensions to vocational superiority. Also to be mentioned, although not new and not confined to men, are the problems of obtaining recognition, usually phrased in terms of earning more money, and job satisfaction in the sense of feeling that one is making a vital contribution to society.

The presence of women in industry is a disturbing fact on several grounds. First, it is frequently felt that women are not gentlemen, that is, they compete unfairly by using sexual attractiveness and other tactics closed to or beneath men. If the distribution of the sexes in positions of power were more equitable, this objection would lose its basis. Secondly, women who have ample opportunities of observing men on the job are not so likely, in the words of Virginia Woolf, to reflect their image double life-size. The man’s occupational role loses its mystery, and women need no longer depend on men as a link to the world outside the home. This problem, too, is one of transition, and should disappear when through habituation to working women both men and women no longer expect masculine superiority and establish casual, workaday relationships on the job. And if through propaganda and education the presence of women in the occupational world, like other minority groups, can be shown to raise levels of productivity and shorten working hours for men, then their competition will not be regarded differently from that presented by other men.

It remains now to gather up the threads of the discussion. The initial problem was posed as to whether men today in fulfilling masculine social role expectations experience difficulties unknown to their fathers, and since such expectations may vary according to social group, class, et cetera—most particularly, urban middle class white men of native parentage. Such difficulties might flow from stepped-up demands of the role itself making it harder to fulfill or from the infusion of ambiguous or contradictory elements into the role, requiring in some cases a double dose of obligation or causing men to cling to a double dose of privilege. Another way of putting this question is to ask whether substantial changes have occurred in the criteria of masculinity over the past fifty years. Everyone thinks he knows what is masculine, and how to recognize a “real man,” but no one can give an adequate definition. It is neither money nor muscles. A woman sociologist offered this one: “A real man is one who can take responsibility for a woman and their children.” While not probably in the forefront of men’s consciousness, this definition is no doubt the traditional one. A male professor of philosophy felt that the mark of a man was the desire to create something original and lasting, although he believed that woman’s ideal man was a subtle Kowalsky plus a smattering of the Saturday Review of Literature. A popular expression of professional men was that women were concerned with survival and men with honor.

At the present time I am engaged in a research project to uncover how men interpret the masculine role, to get at their feelings about being men, and to find out what personality and social correlates are linked to the various interpretations of the masculine role and the felt points of tension and strain. The underlying assumption will be that social change has introduced certain cleavages between values and behavior, and that the very forces which gave rise to these conflicts will contribute to their alleviation. In the meantime it will be of both practical and theoretical interest to know in what directions masculine roles are changing, and how men are handling these changes, and with what other variables are associated anxiety concerning these changes or an accepting, experimental attitude. If we can return to our dominant group, minority group analogy, we can say that men are paying a price for the past lack of reciprocity between the sexes, and the future solution need not be the reversal of the caste line in a matriarchal society as some men fear, but rather the collaborative effort of men and women in evolving new masculine and feminine identities which will integrate the sexes in the emotional division of labor so that the roles which men and women play will not be rationalized or seen as external constraint but eagerly embraced as their own.

References

1. Cayton, Horace R. 1951. “The Psychology of the Negro Under Discrimination,” Pp. 287-288 in Race Prejudice and Discrimination, edited by Arnold M. Rose. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

2. Gillin, John Lewis and John Philip Gillin. 1944. An Introduction to Sociology, New York: The Macmillan Company.

3. Kirkpatrick, Clifford. 1936. “The Measurement of Ethical Inconsistency in Marriage.” International Journal of Ethics 46: 447-448. Also found in Kirkpatrick, Clifford. 1955. The Family as Process and Institution. New York: The Ronald Press Company. p. 163-164.

4. Riesman, David, Nathan Glazer, and Reul Denney. 1953. The Lonely Crowd. Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Books.

5. Parsons, Talcott and Robert F. Bales. 1955. Family, Socialization and Interaction Process. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press.

6. Dybwad, Gunnar. 1952. “Fathers Today: Neglected or Neglectful?” Child Study 29(2): 3-5.

7. Bartemeier, Leo. “The Contribution of the Father to the Mental Health of the Family,” quoted by Gunnar Dybwad in “Fathers Today: Neglected or Neglectful?” Child Study, 29(2) (1952). p. 4.

8. Cf. Margaret Mead. 1943. And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America. New York: William Morrow and Company. Mead, Margaret 1949. Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World. New York: William Morrow and Company. Gorer, Geoffrey. 1948. The American People: A Study in National Character. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

9. Benedict, Ruth. 1938. “Continuities and Discontinuities in Cultural Conditioning,” Psychiatry. 1: 161-167.

10. Green, Arnold. 1946. “The Middle-Class Male Child and Neurosis.” American Sociological Review. 11: 31-41.

11. Terman, Louis M. and Catherine C. Miles. 1936. Sex and Personality: Studies in Masculinity and Femininity. New York: McGraw-Hill.

12. Mead, Margaret. 1939. Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. Included in From the South Seas. New York: William Morrow and Company.

13. Kardiner, Abram. 1954. Sex and Morality. Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. p. 168 and 175.

14. Merton, Robert K. 1938. “Social Structure and Anomie.” American Sociological Review. 3: 672-682.

15. Deutsch, Helene. 1945. The Psychology of Women, Vol. I. New York: Grune and Stratton.

Men’s Attitudes Toward Gender Role Issues

Helen M. Hacker Originally published 1976

In 1957 my article “The New Burdens of Masculinity” deplored the lack of attention paid to strains and conflicts in contemporary masculine roles. The main thesis of that article may be summarized as follows: Without necessarily postulating a “just” balance of rights and duties in traditional gender roles, pressures on men to assume more of the duties previously assigned to women without a correlative diminution—in fact, possibly an accentuation—of their own duties are accumulating from both changes in the occupational structure and the continued momentum of women’s struggle for equal rights.

It would seem that in the intervening years this process has accelerated, and, perhaps in response to this development, men qua men have increasingly become the target of social scientists and commentators. Judging from this burgeoning literature men appear to have reacted in one of three ways: First, there is the anticipated male backlash to women’s liberation. The dysfunctional consequences of attempts to de-differentiate gender roles are elaborated in such books as The New People by Charles Winick, Sexual Suicide and The Naked Nomads by George Gilder, and The Inevitability of Patriarchy by Steven Goldberg. These male upholders of male dominance are joined by such female supporters as Midge Decter in The New Chastity and Ester Vilar in The Manipulated Male. One might be tempted to include The Feminized Male by Patricia Cayo Sexton were it not for the fact that her book contains a seemingly feminist non sequitur.

A second theme has urged the replacement of male by female dominance under the assumption that traditionally feminine virtues are better adapted to solve the problems posed by war, poverty, crime, old age, racism, despoliation of the environment, and a host of lesser ills, but can survive transplantation from the home and the “helping” professions to high level decision-making positions. Exemplary of men who echo feminist women, such as Elizabeth Gould Davis, in the call for a “matriarchal counter-revolution” is Konrad Kellen in The Coming Age of Woman Power.

Third are reports from the men’s liberation front which consider feminization too important to be monopolized by women. Men’s consciousness-raising groups are reversing the valences of rights and duties. Thus, men are now claiming the privileges of participating in childrearing and homemaking, and seeking escape from the obligation of being the sole upholder of family status in the community. For such representative as Warren Farrell (The Liberated Man) and Marc Feigen Fasteau (The Male Machine) the “inexpressive male” is already an anachronism when only female politicians may not cry in public. Myron Benton in The American Male calls for a new concept of masculinity, and is far from idealizing women, but in the end the reader is not sure what differentiation, if any, he would like to make in the social roles of men and women. A similar comment could be made about psychoanalyst Robert Seidenberg’s Marriage Between Equals. Lastly there are Micheal Korda’s Male Chauvinism—How It Works and Joseph Pleck’s collection Men and Masculinity.

Back in 1957 I also suggested that men’s distress stemmed not only from their feelings of inadequacy in fulfilling the stepped-up demands of the masculine role and from adjustment to the new freedoms and responsibilities of women, but also, since these forces did not exert a uniform pressure, from conflicts in the expectations of a man’s role-partners in such status positions as husband, father, son, lover, worker, and so on. (Masculine problems also varied according to social class and ethnic group.) Recent research evidence is supporting the proposition that the contradictory expectations which have long confronted women are beginning to be experienced by men. Mirra Komarovsky, for example, has documented the strain felt by some college males arising from their exposure to norms calling for male intellectual superiority on the one hand and an ideal of intellectual companionship with women as equals, on the other.

It has become a cliché that “women’s liberation is also men’s liberation.” If such were completely the case, one could invoke only such notions as false consciousness, cultural lag, attachment to ingrained habit pattern, persistence of early socialization, etc. to explain male resistance, if such there be, to throwing off the shackles of gender roles. An alternative view is that while shifting perspectives may convert some duties into privileges and rights into obligations, it will require an unlikely trans-valuation of pure dominant values to convince the masses of men that they have nothing to lose from sex equality and to view as unmitigated burdens their monopoly of scarce resources, exemption from domestic responsibilities, dominance in dyadic relations, sexual privileges, one-sided services, deference from women, partial protection from female competition, and maintenance of feelings of superiority to women. Can their perception of possible gains be sufficient to offset these losses?

All but the most separatist women feminists would agree that women need the help of the “49% majority” to effect any fundamental change in gender role definitions. Some men, whether restive under the burdens of their dominant group status or from a sense of fair play, have espoused this cause. The question is how many and to what degree? The books mentioned early in this statement (by no means a complete bibliography!) may represent only the articulate few or they may reflect a growing consciousness of many men. Unfortunately, they are mainly impressionistic and journalistic, and contain no survey data on contemporary male attitudes. What men think, as modulated by such background characteristics as social class, ethnicity, education, income and so forth, and correlated with other attitudes and traits, is a problem of both scientific and social interest. Traditionally, men have expressed more liberal views on many subjects, including gender role issues, than women.1 Is this still the case?

Notes

1 Whereas the Fortune poll of 1946 showed a substantially higher proportion of men than of women favoring a woman president, this difference was reversed by 1972—17% of women in comparison to 7% of men said they would be more likely to vote for a woman running against an equally qualified man. Perhaps in 1946 a woman president of the United States was safe in the realm of fantasy for men.

References

Bartemeier, Leo. 1952. “The Contribution of the Father to the Mental Health of the Family,” quoted by Gunnar Dybwad in “Fathers Today: Neglected or Neglectful?” Child Study 29(2): 4.

Benedict, Ruth. 1938. “Continuities and Discontinuities in Cultural Conditioning.” Psychiatry 1: 161-167.

Cayton, Horace R. “The Psychology of the Negro Under Discrimination.” Pp. 287-288 in Race Prejudice and Discrimination, edited by Arnold M. Rose. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Deutsch, Helene. 1945. The Psychology of Women, Vol. I. New York: Grune and Stratton.

Dybwad, Gunnar. 1952. “Fathers Today: Neglected or Neglectful?” Child Study 29(2): 3-5.

Gillin, John Lewis and John Philip Gillin. 1944. An Introduction to Sociology. New York: The Macmillan Company.

Green, Arnold. 1946. “The Middle-Class Male Child and Neurosis.” American Sociological Review 11: 31-41.

Gorer, Geoffrey. 1948. The American People: A Study in National Character. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Kardiner, Abram. 1954. Sex and Morality. Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Kirkpatrick, Clifford. 1936. “The Measurement of Ethical Inconsistency in Marriage.” International Journal of Ethics 46: 447-448.

Kirkpatrick, Clifford. 1955. The Family as Process and Institution. New York: The Ronald Press Company.

Komarovsky, Mirra. 1973. “Cultural Contradictions and Sex Roles: The Masculine Case.” American Journal of Sociology 4: 874-884.

Mead, Margaret. 1939. Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. Included in From the South Seas. New York: William Morrow and Company.

Mead, Margaret. 1943. And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America. New York: William Morrow and Company.

Mead, Margaret. 1949. Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World. New York: William Morrow and Company.

Merton, Robert K. 1938. “Social Structure and Anomie.” American Sociological Review 3: 672-682.

Riesman, David, Nathan Glazer, and Reuel Denney. 1953. The Lonely Crowd. Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Books.

Parsons, Talcott and Robert F. Bales. 1955. Family, Socialization and Interaction Process. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press.

Terman, Louis M. and Catherine C. Miles. 1936. Sex and Personality: Studies in Masculinity and Femininity. New York: McGraw-Hill.

The Feminine Protest of the Working Wife

Helen M. Hacker Originally published 1971

In questioning Linton’s assumption of unimodality in real culture patterns and societal consensus in defining such patterns, Gross, Manson, and McEachern in their Explorations in Role Analysis point to the high degree of disagreement among role definers so far studied on the evaluative standards applicable to the female position in American society. The present paper represents an attempt at a rough measurement on a national scale of consensus on some aspects of the behavior and attributes of the role of the married woman in the United States with respect to expectations concerning her gainful employment outside the home.

There is little need to detain the reader with facts and figures on working wives who constitute the most rapidly growing group of working women. They now number 16,676,000 and make up three-fifths of the entire woman labor force, and, of course, women, whatever their marital status, are more than one-third of the total American labour force.

What effects have women’s—and especially married women’s—advent into the labor market had on the definition of the feminine role? To what extent has a new feminine role which includes work been institutionalized? What congruencies and variations in expectations for the position or married woman do we find among such role definers as full-time working wives, part-time working wives, non-working wives, the husbands of women in these work status categories, single, widowed, and divorced women, both working and not working, and single, widowed, and divorced men?

To explore these questions a nation-wide survey was undertaken in 1958 by a leading advertising agency.1 The area-probability sample consisted of approximately 2,000 women and 2,000 men. The questionnaire included items on the respondent’s or his wife’s work history and plans for the future, the advantages of the working wife and of the housewife, the wife’s identification with either role, the husband’s attitude toward his wife’s working, guesses as to the proportion of women who work, the proportion of married women who work from financial necessity, for luxuries, and because they like working; and, finally, a list of phrases applicable either to the housewife or to the working wife.

The data from these polls can be interpreted as showing that women’s employment outside the home has indeed modified the evaluative standards for the role of married woman in the minds of many role definers. Women have not been relieved of their primary responsibility for the home and children, nor has any ethic of work been added to this position. Work remains a qualifiedly permissive, not a mandatory aspect of it. Certain attributes, however, rather than behaviours, of the work role have entered into the norms for the position of married woman. Specifically, housewives revealed a greater tendency to arrogate to themselves favourable phrases denoting personality traits associated by the majority of both samples with the working wife, whereas working wives claimed more favorable phrases denoting performances associated with the housewife than other groups granted them. Housewives want to think they are alert, informed, well-educated, and interested in events and people, while working wives want to believe they are loving mothers, good wives, and efficient in household tasks (see Table 1). This is one part of our evidence which shows that both housewives and working wives concentrate on the by-products of working rather than the work itself. Working wives are constrained to say they are not neglecting any of the performances of the traditional feminine role, and housewives protest that they, too, share in the attributes of the newer feminine role. We are thus led to speak of the feminine protest of the working wife as a counterpart to the more familiar Adlerian concept of the masculine protest of the housewife.

Table 1. Attribution of Descriptive Phrases to Working Wife* By Employment Status

Total

Works Full-Time

Works Part-Time

Does not Work

Ambitions

% assigning phrase

59

63

56

58

% of these who assign it to the working wife

92

95

91

91

Up-To-Date

50

49

43

51

% assigning phrase working wife

90

90

86

90

Nervous

59

51

55

61

% assigning phrase working wife

73

59

75

77

Well-educated

37

33

38

38

% assigning phrase working wife

89

88

95

89

Liked better by men

43

36

37

45

% assigning phrase working wife

49

58

41

49

Good citizen

21

21

26

20

% assigning phrase working wife

48

67

62

40

Selfish

39

28

35

40

% assigning phrase working wife

80

54

77

88

Efficient in household tasks

66

55

59

70

% assigning phrase working wife

21

31

36

19

Loving mother

54

49

42

58

% assigning phrase working wife

11

20

17

7

Good wife

42

34

32

46

% assigning phrase working wife

17

38

25

11

*Housewife equals 100% minus % for working wife

Let us take a longer look at the feminine protest of the working wife, who, though she may work like a man, proclaims she is still a woman in the traditional sense. First, why does she work? Working wives give economic, rather than psychological, reasons for their working, and stress economic benefits as the chief advantage of the working wife. If working wives say financial necessity is their reason for working, they shield themselves from the accusation of being competitive, unfeminine, or shirking the traditional role of women. But some doubt may be cast on the sincerity of their answers, when we find that they impute non-economic motives to other wives who work—chiefly, a desire to escape from the home. Further, working wives do not say very often they enjoy the specific job they have. Rather they stress the by-products of working, such as keeping alive mentally, easing tensions, meeting people. Thus, the job can be justified on the grounds that it makes a woman a better wife and mother, and a person of whom her family can be proud—not in terms of direct accomplishments, but in being a more interesting, sociable person.

Working wives are also more generous in their estimates of the number of married women who work than are either housewives or men. Social support is seen in numbers. If there are many people like you, then you can’t be too abnormal or bad.

In defending one’s own position, one often tends to disparage others. Thus, working wives stress the selfish benefits of being a housewife. They say that housewives have more leisure, get more rest, are less rushed, etc., rather than pointing to the altruistic benefits to their families. They also explain non-working wives as not being qualified for work or not needing to work. Working wives, also, do not want to think that their work imposes any penalty on their families, but only on themselves. Therefore, they do not say as frequently as the housewife does that the housewife is a better wife and mother, but rather that she carries less of a burden.

We asked our respondents whether they thought they looked at life more like a woman who works at a paid job outside her home, or one who does not. Almost one-fourth of working wives said they looked at life like housewives and a similar number of housewives looked at life like working wives. So we shall call them “the deviant 25%.” We found that these two groups of women have many social characteristics in common. They are better educated, have higher incomes, are more likely to have husbands in the professional and clerical-sales occupational categories—in short, to be higher in the social scale than the wives whose outlook conformed to their actual status.

The fact that housewives of higher social status may identify with working wives is not surprising, but how can we explain the tendency of a similarly situated group of working wives to identify with housewives? The reasons given by the deviant 25% for their cross-identification may clarify this issue and also point to a basic conflict of modern women which we shall discuss later. Over half the working wives who identify with their non-working sisters do so on homemaking grounds. A smaller group says they are good mothers. Thus, by implication they suggest that being a good homemaker and a good mother is not typical of working wives. Others of them say that the job does not represent their primary interest. A few report they are busy in the home. Only 5% refer to psychological aspects of the housewifely role, including being her own boss and having leisure and contentment. Thus, their reasons for identifying with the housewife are largely altruistic. They want to see themselves as fulfilling the wife’s traditional role. They do not covet self-oriented wifely satisfactions, but the psychological gratifications of filling a socially approved role.

How about the housewives who identify with working wives? Over half of them do so out of protest that they are indeed active outside the home, have outside interests and a broad viewpoint. By implication they suggest that these traits are not typical of housewives. Over a fourth say they identify with working wives because they understand their problems and have had recent work experience. And, indeed, housewives who have worked in the past are more prone to cross-identify. A lesser number reveal their negative image of the housewife by saying that they—presumably in comparison to other housewives—are not ideal nor trivial, nor are they absorbed in household routine. Other attribute to themselves feelings of independence and concern about personal grooming which they believe typical of the working wife. It is also interesting to note that a few housewives identify with the working wife because they think themselves rushed and overworked, thereby implying that the working wife works harder than the housewife, and her lot is not a happy one.

In comparing the ways in which housewives and working wives cross-identify we see the main conflict of modern women and the cross-pressures to which she is subject. Girls and boys alike are educated to develop their individual capacities and to participate in the life and work of the society. Both are imbued with achievement goals, but in a direct manner for boys, and ambiguous way for girls. That is, there is no question in a boy’s mind that he will work, that in order to be a man he must work. There is not conflict about the goal of occupational success for him. But work does not help a girl to become a woman. She becomes a woman when she marries and has children. Masculine values, however—or American values, according to Florence Kluckhohn—are dominant in our society, especially those involving money and work. So women want a share in them too, and men, while expecting women to display the behaviors and attributes of the traditional, nurturing feminine role, accord more prestige to the woman who also realizes some of the traditional masculine—(or American) values of education and achievement.

Parsons has phrased this conflict of modern women as one between the values of a particularistic and universalistic orientation to life, and indicated the serious obstacles which confront women in the implementation of universalistic goals. He says, “Broadly, married women in our society are not in direct competition for occupational status and its primary reward symbols with men or their own class.”2 And his theoretical background for this statement is summarized by Robin Williams, “If women were to compete for jobs on an equal basis with men, drastic changes would be necessary in the family system, or in the occupational structure, or in both.”3

To the extent that such changes have not occurred, women have resolved the conflict by making claim to the performances of the particularistic role and the attributes of the universalistic role. Housewives feel more secure and successful in the former endeavor, and working wives in the latter. In bolstering their own feelings of complete realization of the new, composite feminine role each group reacts defensively by denigrating the other and compensating for their own perceived deficiencies. The housewife, secure in the homemaking component of the feminine role, wants to be valued as a person with an emotional and intellectual life of her own. The working wife, confident of her interest and attractiveness as a person, wants to be adjudged a good wife and mother.

Thus, the entry of women into the labour market has affected the conception of the feminine role held by all female definers, whether they are currently working or not. All women want recognition as wives and mothers and something more. This something more is not work for its own sake or occupational achievement as such, but rather the direct monetary rewards of work and the indirect personality gains of feeling enriched by life and interest beyond the home. As we have said, the behavioristic components of the traditional feminine role do not seem to have changed in what is considered mandatory, although paid employment outside the home is permitted under certain conditions, but personal attributes have been added and placed towards the obligatory end of the permitted-mandatory spectrum. In the present transitional stage of our society both working and non-working wives experience doubts and frustrations in their attempts to fulfill their concept of the new feminine role.

Table 2. Reasons for Working

Economic Reasons

% Financial Necessity

34

% Supplementary Income

39

Total Economic Reasons

73%

Psychological Reasons

% Pull of Job

17

% Push of Home

20

Total Psychological Reasons

37%

“Pull of job” includes responses referring to enjoyment of working in general, liking her specific job, being needed by the employer, and such by-products of working as keeping alive mentally, having social contacts, feeling independent, and easing nervous tensions. “Push of home” responses are of two types: active and passive. Active responses refer to the wife’s wish to escape from the home, her desire to get away from children, husband, other members of the household, her dislike of housework, and being bored or lonesome at home. Passive responses indicate that she is not needed at home—chiefly because of the absence of young children.

Notes

1 Although these data were collected over ten years ago, it is the writer’s impression from more informal kinds of research that no major changes in attitudes have occurred.

2 Talcott Parsons. 1964. “A Revised Analytical Approach to the Theory of Social Stratification.” Pp. 423 in Essays in Sociological Theory (rev. ed.). New York: The Free Press.

3 Robin M. Williams, Jr. 1951. American Society: A Sociological Interpretation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

The Socio-Economic Context of Sex and Power: A Study of Women, Work and Family Roles in Four Israeli Institutional Frameworks

Helen M. Hacker Originally published 1976

Introductory Statement

This research proposal is instigated by the concern felt by the Leadership of the Moshav Ovdim Shitufi (cooperative small holders’ settlement) in Israel in regard to the occupational dissatisfaction of their female members. This is a type of social organization which represents a compromise between a kibbutz and a regular moshav. Productive work is carried out on a communal basis, as in the kibbutz, but each family lives in its own house, as in the moshav, and draws up its own budget. The collective income is distributed to families on the basis of the number of persons in the household. Men and women alike are expected to work an eight-hour day, but married women are given “credit” towards their required hours for the performance of household tasks. The number of hours so credited varies according to the number of children in the family. The principle of “self-labor” prescribes the employment of any household help, so that, in the absence of husbandly assistance, the full burden of maintaining the home falls upon the wife-mother. Although women’s services in the home were given social and financial recognition, the automatic assignment of married women to domestic duties led to their virtual exclusion from the more specialized and skilled tasks of either an agricultural or industrial nature.

Establishment of the Moshavim Shitufim began in the late 1930s, thus allowing time for a group of “unemployed matriarchs” to appear. These women have become discontent with their limited lives, much like their American counterparts, and have expressed the wish to undertake various business enterprises, such as a motel for tourists. This outlet for their creative energies, however, is blocked on the objective side by the prohibition of hired labor, and, motivationally, by the fact that such an activity will not add to the family income which is solely based on “need.”

For younger, better educated and more professionally trained women the problem is even more acute. Full time commitment to a “career” would entail their carrying a double burden without extra reward. It might be supposed that the other, “less ambitious” women might be assigned the task of doing the housework of those of their sisters who preferred to work outside the home, but, apart from the demeaning aspect of such labor in a private rather than a collective setting, they would not be permitted to reap any benefit in addition to that gained from taking care of their own homes.1

The presenting social problem, then, from the point of view of the Moshav Shitufi as a community, is the loss of potential female productive power, while on the part of individual women, it is a loss of material and psychic rewards. The problem of female “underemployment” becomes especially pressing and poignant for an encapsulated, egalitarian society because not only does the presumed disaffection of half its members undermine its raison d’être and set in motion a whole chain of dysfunctional consequences in its social life, but even more threatening is the likelihood that a substantial portion of the younger generation will leave the moshav unless the work interests of the young women can be accommodated.

The proposed research project, however, has a twofold objective. The first, and applied, aim is to provide the basic data that would help the leadership to solve—or at least to clarify—the policy problems posed by the present occupational arrangements. It is possible that the leadership define the problem differently from the majority of the members. Basic fact-finding in the first phase of the research will be directed to measuring the extent and dimensions of work-related dissatisfactions among both men and women, and the personal and social characteristics with which these are associated. (The procedures to be used in the preliminary stages of the investigation and the kinds of data they may be expected to yield are described below under the heading of Sources and Methods to be Used).

The second, more theoretical aim consists of taking advantage of the natural field experiment which the several settlement patterns in Israel afford in order to test the relationship among certain controlled and key variables, which in the last analysis may condition women’s work opportunities in any society. Here the hope is to make some contribution to the basic question of whether, in the present state of the industrial arts, including our knowledge of the psycho-biology and the workings of society, any institutional framework can be engineered which provides equally for the expressive and economic desires of both men and women—or whether there are inherent limitations on such equality, arising either from the social consequences or biological differences between men and women and/or the functional prerequisites of any type of social organization.

As to the key variables, many theorists have postulated a vital linkage among men’s primacy in the occupational structure, women’s whole or partial immersion in the home, and the political-legal structure of the society. A very crude and simplistic expression of this notion is that male control over economic resources has enabled men as a group to bend the polity to their interests and as an individuals to exercise hegemony in their own homes. Technological, along with ideological, change, however, has threatened male dominance by enabling women to obtain independent sources of livelihood and thus to contribute more resources to the marriage. In the wake of this development, a whole spate of studies have been made (see Relation to Work Being Done by Others in the same general area for a sampling of them) which explore the relationship between the wife’s employment and her marital power.

Investigations, however, of the relationship between women’s political power in the general society and their marital power, despite an impressive pseudo-historical literature on matriarchy, have not been conducted along empirical lines. It is this relationship which I would like to test in the almost ideal laboratory conditions afforded by Israel. That is, I propose to examine the relationship between male-female conflict at the micro i.e., familial, and the macro of institutional levels. Is there indeed any correlation between reward-seeking attainment in marriage, including the satisfaction of occupational wishes, with the economic and political balance of power between men and women in larger society?

Although marriage and family institutions have traditionally been viewed in functional interdependence with political and economic institutions, they have not been given equal weight. Thus, such economic and technological determinists as Engels, Veblen, and Ogburn grant priority to economic institutions in forming family structures, while some sociologists, most notably William Goode and Marion Levy, Jr., stress the importance of family organization and values as an independent variable in industrialization.

This difference in emphasis upon the direction of causality has practical implications for the policies recommended to alleviate the situation of women in the modern world. Radical feminists, defined by Shulamith Firestone2 as those who hold the sexual class system to provide the basis for the “exploitative” economic class system, assert that genuine feminine equality must wait upon the dissolution of the nuclear family which inevitably casts men into the role of chief provider and “patriarch.” In other words, the nuclear family ceases to be the unit of income production, consumption, of even child rearing. On the other side are those feminists and sociologists3 who consider the demand for the abolition of the family as not getting to the crux of the question of sex equality, and who place greater stress on women’s access to the productive resources of society which alone will afford them the power base to bargain and end conflict for equality. In this view the nuclear family may be retained, if women are able to achieve an equal sharing of economic and expressive roles—i.e., role-interchangeability between husband and wife—within marriage.4 It permits a dynamic of interaction between the struggle of women as a conflict interest group and the power which individual women can exert in the marital relationship.

These two outlooks find expression in the avenues which have been taken, if not to make women full economic competitors with men, at least to free them for gainful employment outside the home. “Marxist” societies have chosen not to tamper with the male role, but to collectivize women’s domestic and child-rearing responsibilities—at least in principle, if not in practice. Democratic, welfare-oriented nations, on the other hand, have concentrated more on measures to help husbands and wives share in both the internal and external maintenance of the home. Neither type of society has achieved great success in its objective, whether by reason of military exigency emphasis upon capital accumulation, ideological hangovers from the past, a spontaneous or induced rebirth of familism or varying combinations of these factors.

Basic to the question of restructuring men’s and women’s occupational and familial roles is the consideration of the dominant value orientation. While two-income or two-job families have been found compatible with our economic value system, there has been considerable questioning of the possibility of two-career families. The intermittent and/or part-time character of women’s employment, among other factors, has condemned them to second-rate careers. But as long as the majority of women accept the primary responsibility for the care of the home and of children, they will not be able to compete on an equal basis with men. Further, so long as this remains the dominant pattern, those husbands who do share these responsibilities with their wives will be placed at a competitive disadvantage with other men who are free to devote all their time and energy to their work, often with wifely assistance either in concrete form or merely providing what Jessie Barnard has termed the “stroking function” of women. Even retaining the primacy of an achievement orientation, however, there is the possibility that if women continue to press their demands for equal treatment in industry the cultural expectation of the husband as the principal breadwinner will change, and that individual couple choices as to whether the wife or the husband will be the stay-at-home of the secondary career partner may be split 50–50. In this event the family will still be one primary career, but the “careerist” will be as likely to be the wife as the husband.

As stated previously, there are only two other, and rather dubious, conditions which would permit a two-career family. The first is that private services in the form of domestic help could be utilized to free the wife for full career commitment. We have already seen that this solution is forbidden to female members of the kibbutz and the Moshav Shitufi on ideological grounds. Such a development is also imminent in the United States to the extent that we are trying to implement equality of opportunity for every person regardless of sex, race, nationality, religion, or “disadvantaged” background. As this equality becomes more and more of a reality, fewer women will be available as servants—unless, of course, their scarcity enables them to bargain for wages and other prerequisites which will render domestic work as attractive as other alternatives. The second condition, as discussed above, would be an acceleration of the transfer of family functions to other agencies—a process which has already begun to be reversed in the kibbutz. Whether this trend back to familism in the kibbutz represents a “natural” response or merely the re-emergence of a European cultural concept of the good wife and mother, long repressed, but not forgotten, is a moot question. In any event, clarification of this matter in Israel will have important implications for social policy in the United States.

There is yet a third possibility, one which involves the redefinition of careers along “feminine” or humanist lines. In such a shift of values recognition and material reward may be downplayed in favor of the “quality of life.” Should this re-orientation come to pass, reduced work schedules and shared marital roles may be desired by the majority, with only a few of the most gifted or most ambitious insisting on complete dedication to their work. Very likely, such individuals may abjure marriage and parenthood altogether—a sacrifice which most such men have not had to make in the past.

All the foregoing possibilities have been realized to some extent in Israel. It is hoped that a systematic examination of the four kinds of social organization along a continuum from complete collectivism to private enterprise which currently co-exist in Israel will help to identify those variables which are crucial to the questions raised in this study. Israel provides unique opportunities as a social laboratory not only for its conjunction of varying degrees of mixed farming, manufacturing, and other enterprises in differing normative environments, but also for its high percentage of immigrants representing a variety of cultural backgrounds. The following chart presents a rough schematic of the differences and similarities in the four institutional frameworks under consideration.

Table 1. Social Organization of Four Israeli Institutional Frameworks

Kibbutz

Moshav Shitufi

Regular Moshav

Private Sector

Product

Ownership of means of production

Communal

Communal

Individual*

Private

Responsibility for production decisions including  allocation of work tasks

Communal

Communal

Individual

Individual

Purchasing and selling unit

Joint

Joint

Joint

Individual

Characteristics of “productive” workers

Member, disproport. male

Member; predomin. male

Member** and/or hired labor

Disproport. male

Consumption

Criteria for allocation of income

Need (quantitatively defined)

Need

Earnings of family

Earnings of family

Unit which makes budget decisions

Communal

Individual

Individual

Individual

Housing

Dining facilities

Communal

Individual

Individual

Individual

Extent of housekeeping

Simple, communal        

More elaborate, individual

More elaborate, individual

More elaborate or variable individual

Division of household tasks between spouses

Joint (theoretically)

Mainly wife

Mainly wife

Probably wife

Family “provider”

Both spouses

Both

Mainly husband

Mainly husband

Family “spender”

Neither spouse

Mainly wife

Mainly wife

Mainly wife

Childrearing

Principal socializing

agents

“Nurses,” peers, teachers

Mainly wife

Mainly wife

Mainly wife

Parental role differentiation

None

Traditional

Traditional

Traditional

*Heavy machinery may be used cooperatively **Wives may raise chickens, vegetables, etc.

Table Notes:

A more elaborate taxonomy would indicate variations within each framework.

This table provides no information on the relationship between husband and wife along the dimensions of power, prestige, communication, affective emotional ties, or relative participation in larger kinship or friendship groups because these have not as yet been adequately determined.

(1) The Questions the Research Is Directed Toward and Their Significance

As previously stated, the principal focus of the present research is to explore the possible range of relationships among certain dimensions of marital interaction, wives’ attitudes and behaviors in regard to work, and the participation in and power of women in the decision-making activities of the community, and to find out whether these relationships vary in the four institutional frameworks under study: the kibbutz, the Moshav Shitufi, the regular Moshav, and the private sector as represented by an urban sample of married students and/or personnel at the University of the Negev—in other words, an investigation of the interplay between the micro or familial and macro or institutional levels.

In pursuit of this objective, some of the specific questions which suggest themselves include: (Please note that a comparison among the four frameworks is implied for each question):

How do men and women define the roles of the two sexes, especially with regard to work behaviors and attributes? What are their desired self-images?

What, if any, are the differences in male and female attitudes towards work?

What are the pressures which motivate women either to aspire to a “male model” of work or to be satisfied with a different or lesser commitment? Which women are vulnerable to which pressures? i.e., as described in terms of age, education, number and ages of children, husband’s attitude toward wife’s work, husband’s help in home, with children, and in wife’s “vocation,” husband’s prestige and/or earnings by virtue of his work or other activity.

In regard to the factors listed in question 3, what is the direction of causality—or which are motivating factors? For example, does a wife seek education, limit the number of children, insist on husband’s help, etc., because she has certain work aspirations or does she enter into a given work situation only if these enabling factors are present?

What kinds of satisfactions do wives seek, and how do they rank them in importance? To what extent are deficiencies in some areas compensated for by gratifications in others? How do these change over the life cycle, either in actuality or in anticipation? Do women formulate life plans? To what extent and in what ways do couples view their families as a “set of intercontingent careers?”

What kinds of satisfactions are sought in work? What is the relative importance of the psychological and economic rewards? How do these differ for men and women? (If they do.)

Is there any relationship between the husband’s commitment to work and that of his wife? Similarly, for community activities?

Does the wife’s involvement in decision-making or other community activity vary according to the nature and extent of her work outside the home?

In what ways, if any, is the wife’s attitude toward work affected by such aspects of marital interaction as relative dominance, power in decision-making, extent of communication between husband and wife, and overall “happiness” in marriage? Similarly, the husband’s?

Is the perception of such expressive benefits of marriage as companionship, empathy, physical love and affection similar for both spouses? Are such perceptions influenced by the work of either spouse?

Do the attitudes of husband and wife towards the wife’s work differ from or resemble those of the following kinds of persons:

a. Their work associates

b. Their ten best friends, whether male or female, or those with whom they have the most frequent contact

c. Their siblings or other relatives of their own generation

d. Their parents or other relatives of the ascendant generation

e. Their adolescent or adult children (if they have any)

What is the relationship between a woman’s past work experience and her present vocational plans or aspirations? Does dissatisfaction with her job evoke a wish for a different assignment or to be exempt from “productive” tasks?

(Where applicable) How do work-assigning committees view women’s roles and what criteria do they apply in making assignments—for both sexes?

In a sense the significance of these questions has already been indicated in the Introductory Statement. It is hoped that the data gathered in the attempt to answer them will clarify both the obstacles and the inducements to the full utilization of the productive capacities of women—on both the individual and the group level. More specifically, this research should:

Specify work motivations for women, as well as men, since it brings into sharp relief the separation of economic from psychological rewards.

Discover whether sex differences in regard to work are accentuated or attenuated in varying social contexts.

Contribute a provisional answer to the perennial question of what is biological and what is cultural in the role differentiation of men and women.

Identify those problems of women which emerge from their specific types of social structures, thus providing leads for their alleviation.

(2) Relation To Work Being Done By Others

To my knowledge no work is currently being done either on the Moshav Shitufi nor on the hypothetical linkage of women’s general status in society to their marital power. Nor, for that matter, do books abound on the regular moshav. A recent work by Maxwell I. Klayman entitled The Moshav in Israel: A Case Study in Institutional Building for Agricultural Development, published by Praeger in 1970, does not give special attention to women’s occupations. While studies based on individual families seem also to be lacking for Israel, there is of course a substantial literature on the Kibbutz. Of special relevance to the present problem are Yonina Talmon’s paper “Sex-Role Differentiation in an Equalitorian Society” in Thomas E. Lasswell and Burma’s Society and Social Life and her chapter in M. F. Nimkoff’s Comparative Family Systems called “The Family in a Revolutionary Movement—The Case of the Kibbutz in Israel.”

The relationship between the wife’s employment status and her power vis à vis her husband, however, has been examined in a variety of cultural settings. While most studies are concerned with the effect of the wife’s employment on her influence on various family decisions, including the number of children, many also deal with the prior question of the husband’s control over his wife’s work behavior. The following list is only partial:

United States

Blood, Robert O., Jr. and Donald M. Wolfe. 1960. Husbands And Wives. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Conters, Richard et al. 1971. “Conjugal power structure: a re-examination.” American Sociological Review 36 (April): 264-278.

Heer, David M. 1963. “Dominance and the working wife.” In F. Ivan Nye and Lois W. Hoffman, eds. The Employed Mother, Chicago, IL: Rand-McNally.

Komarovsky, Mirra. Blue-Collar Marriage. New York: Random House. 1964.

Papanek, Miriam L. 1969. “Authority and sex roles in the family.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 29 (May): 359-363.

(My own dissertation (1961) revealed that husband’s attitude, in contradiction to Mildred Weil’s5 findings, did not seem to have great predictive value for the wife’s decision to work, but rather changed in accommodation to it. My as yet unpublished research in Italy and in India, while not specifically directed to this area, did show spousal agreement in regard to the wife’s working outside the home.)

Germany

Lamouse, Annette. 1969. “Family roles of women: A German example.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 31 (February): 145-152.

Lupri, Eugen. 1969. “Contemporary authority patterns in the West German family: a study in cross-national validation.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 31 (February): 134-144.

Greece

Safilios-Rothschild, Constantina. 1967. “A comparison of power structure and marital satisfaction in urban Greek and French families.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 29 (May): 290-302.

(Of interest to the Moshav Shitufi situation is her finding that the advent of babies does not keep the Greek wife at home, because female relatives serve as babysitters, perhaps paralleling the old Negro grandmother in the United States.)

France

Michel, Andrée. 1967. “Comparative data concerning the interaction in French and American families.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 11 (June): 157-165.

Denmark

Kandel, Denise and Gerald S. Lesser. 1972. “Marital decision-making in American and Danish urban families: a research note.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 34 (February): 134-138.

Yugoslavia

Buric, Olivera and Andjelka Zecevic. 1967. “Family, authority, marital satisfaction, and the social network in Yugoslavia.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 29 (May): 325-336.

Japan

Blood, Robert O., Jr. and Yuzura John Takeshita. 1964. “Development of cross-cultural equivalence of measures of marital interaction for the U.S.A. and Japan.” Pp. 333-344 in Transactions of the 5th World Congress of Sociology. Louvain, International Sociological Association.

Puerto Rico

Weller, Robert H. 1968. “The employment of wives, dominance, and fertility.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 31 (August): 437-442.

Ghana

Oppong, Christine. 1970. “Conjugal power and resources: an urban African example.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 32 (November): 676-680.

For preliterate societies, Morris Zelditch is outstanding for his analysis of the data contained in the Human Relations Area Files:

Zelditch, Morris, Jr. 1955. “Role differentiation in the nuclear family: a comparative study.” Pp. 307-351 in Talcott Parsons and Robert F. Bales, eds. Family, Socialization, and Interaction Process. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.)

Two other works which concentrate on the roles and power of women are:

Paulme, Denise (Ed.). 1963. Women of Tropical Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kaberry Phyllis M. 1953. Women of the Grassfields. London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office.

One cannot hope even to tap all the empirical studies and impressionistic analyses of the general status of women in societies, historically and cross-culturally. The present study should qualify, define, and hopefully augment the body of general propositions relating to the three variables under consideration.

(3) Sources And Methods To Be Used

Resources

Dr. Dorit P. Pandan-Eisenstark, Deputy Head, Department of Behavioral Science, University of the Negev, will act as the co-director of this study. Dr. Chana Rapaport, Director of the Henrietta Szold Institute for Research in Behavioral Science, has expressed his willingness to give counsel, and to make office space available to me at the Institute. I also have several other professional contacts in Israel at the University of Haifa, the Hebrew University, and the Bar-Ilan University who will serve as consultants.

Planned phases of Study

A. My first month in Israel will be spent in generalized fact-finding: library research, interviews with consultants and informants, including the leaders of the Moshavim Shitufim, and visiting many of the 26 settlements presently in existence. I will also consult with social scientists who have a special knowledge of the kibbutz and the regular moshav.

Then I will spend several weeks as a participant-observer in the Moshav Shitufi selected for this investigation, perhaps substituting for bona fide members on various work assignments.

B. On the basis of these experiences, with the cooperation of Dr. Pandan-Eisenstark, I will construct a relatively brief questionnaire which will be administered to every adult in the moshav, probably between 150 and 250 persons. This census will inquire into work history, work plans, division of household tasks, leisure time activities, community participation, attitudes towards cooperative child care, involvement in kin networks, sociometric ratings of other households, place on scales measuring various attitudes, including acceptance of socialist ideology, motivations for work, sex roles, and whatever else may emerge as relevant during my stay in the moshav. The census will also include background data on the composition of the household, country of origin, length of time in Israel and in the moshav, and extent of religious observances.

C. On the basis of the census results certain households will be selected for intensive interviewing. The aim of this sampling would be to obtain as complete a representation as possible of the various combinations of background factors and attitudinal constellations. Only married couples would be included, and husbands and wives would be interviewed separately. (A similar procedure is projected for the other three institutional frameworks.) The size of the sample selected for in-depth interviewing will depend on the availability of funds and the possibility of conducting interviews in English and/or obtaining the services of volunteer interviewers or interpreters.

It is hoped that a minimum of 80 couples or 160 persons will be interviewed, stratified as follows:

Table 2

Moshav Shitufi

30

Kibbutz

20

Regular Moshav

15

University of the Negev personnel        

15

80

Notes

1 This situation makes quite explicit the fact, partially obscured in non-socialist societies, that, to the extent that husbands do not share in household chores or men not make up half the personnel in collectivized services, some married women can achieve economic equality with men only at the expense of other women.

2 Shulamith Firestone. 1970. The Dialectic of Sex. New York: Bantam Books.

3 See Juliet Mitchell. 1966. “Women: The Longest Revolution.” New Left Review December; and John Scanzoni. 1972. Sexual Bargaining: Power Politics in the American Marriage. Prentice-Hall.

4 The reluctance of American women to revolutionize marriage is expounded in Margaret N. Poloma and T. Neal Garland. 1971. “The Married Professional Woman: A Study in the Tolerance of Domestication.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 33 (August): 531-540.

5 Mildred W. Weil. 1961. “An Analysis of the Factors Influencing Married Women’s Actual or Planned Work Participation.” American Sociological Review 26 (February): 91-96.

Problems in Defining and Measuring

Marital Power Cross-Culturally

Helen M. Hacker Originally published 1977

Much research effort has been invested in measuring the relative power of husbands and wives and in seeking the determinants of marital power without coming to grips with the concept of power itself. Interest in this problem may result from the wish simply to gain enhanced understanding of what is culturally defined by these investigators as an important aspect of family structure and process or, more pointedly, to evaluate the conditions that facilitate or militate against sex equality in both the familial and extra-familial domains.

The first difficulty in defining the concept of power is to decide whether it should be considered from the actor’s or the observer’s point of view—a question that becomes especially pressing in cross-cultural research. Power in the Weberian1 tradition has been defined as the ability to achieve goals that run counter to the goals of other actors in the situation. This model implies the overcoming of resistance in getting one’s own way and makes power a zero-sum concept. In the absence of opposition can the question of power be raised? And how can this view of power be reconciled with the familiar proposition that that power is greatest which is most invisible? Sociologists who have been socialized in a society that places a high premium on equality, individuality, non-exploitation, and the provision of a wide range of choices may well adjudge persons or groups as relatively powerless who themselves are quite accommodated to their subordinate status and limited options. The sociologist may see them as victims of false consciousness.

Conversely, more privileged persons or groups may lack any awareness of power. A homely example of this reciprocal situation is provided in the case of the wife of an American career diplomat who automatically discarded her own plans for graduate education to accompany her husband to a foreign capital. It is possible, of course, that if she had not acquiesced so willingly, her husband might have resorted to persuasion or even coercion. It is also possible that the young husband might have preferred to decline the opportunity, but was constrained by the requirements of the masculine role to accept it. Or he may have acceded to the wishes of his wife, who deemed her husband’s career a more profitable investment than her own. Clearly, the dyadic model cannot stand alone. Both spouses are helped or hindered, according to their outlook, by dominant value orientations and social structures.

Thus, the Weberian model, which focuses on the actors’ perception of the situation and the degree of legitimacy they accord to cultural definitions of appropriate actions, may appear inadequate to the researcher who seeks to transcend cultural relativity. Other frequently cited concepts of power are similarly deficient in bridging the gap between the subjective awareness and the objective manifestation of power. Bierstedt,2 for example, defines power as latent force or the ability to employ force. But how can a latent force be measured? Bierstedt states further that “authority is institutionalized power.” Authority appears more amenable to investigation. Informants can report who is invested by cultural norms and/or legal sanctions with the authority to make decisions in certain situations or relationships. They may not, however, be able to ascertain the wishes of the persons involved or to specify the circumstances when authority is whittled down by manipulation or influence. In short, although authority may be a source of power, it does not automatically confer power in the face of opposition. Power, as distinct from authority, is non-cultural. It exists in the interstices of culture. The dilemma remains. The researcher who wants to compare relative spousal power cross-culturally must decide whether to look through the eyes of participants in assessing familial processes, such as decision-making or conflict resolution, or to compare husbands and wives in terms of such objective indicators as education, health, leisure time, sexual freedom, control of reproduction, freedom of movement, possibility of divorce, marketable skills, possibilities for remarriage, alternatives to marriage, and so on.

In a sense, most investigators of marital power have resolved the dilemma either by using marital power as an indicator of the general relative power of men and women in a society or by making certain assumptions in regard to the structural and cultural support given to either sex and then examining individual differences in spouses’ ability to capitalize upon the advantages or to surmount the difficulties presented by the larger social context. In regard to the former approach, Strodtbeck,3 in his 1949 comparison of conjugal power among Navaho Indians, Mormons, and Texans, deliberately selected these groups because they “presumably differed in terms of the degree to which the wife was favored by the cultural phrasing of power.” Blood and Wolfe,4 on the other hand, have been criticized, most notably by Gillespie,5 for erroneously assuming that American husbands and wives embark on their marriages against an equalitarian background so that subsequent power differentials may be attributed to disparities in their competence as marital partners. Gillespie argues that the resources that bolster competence and power are not randomly distributed among individuals but “structurally predetermined in favor of the male.” (Further methodological objections will be considered subsequently.)

In addition to the dilemmas and difficulties in the conceptualization of marital power are the problems of the validity of the measuring instruments employed that confront the investigator of any social phenomenon or relationship. Historically, researchers in this area have not utilized the objective indicator approach discussed above, but have chosen direct observation of individual couples and families. Roughly their strategies fall into two chief categories: (1) the investigation of real-life processes of marital interaction and (2) simulated situations that involve laboratory methods or some kind of game-playing. Both methods encounter methodological hazards when used cross-culturally.

Although participant-observation might be considered a good example of the first strategy, it is impractical on several counts, including time and non-access to the husband-wife exchanges that take place behind closed doors. Investigators in this category have typically settled for some kind of self-report measure. Thus Blood and Wolfe identified eight areas which they considered important and typical for the average American family, and the wives in their Detroit sample were asked who usually made the final decision in regard to such matters as what job the husband should take, what car to get, whether or not to buy life insurance, where to go on vacation, what house or apartment to take, whether or not the wife should go to work or quit work, what doctor to have when someone is sick, and how much money the family can afford to spend per week on food.

Obviously, many of these decisions would be quite irrelevant in another society. The substitution of relevant questions in terms of the cultural context might permit the cross-cultural comparison of power scores were it not for the fact that the method itself leaves much to be desired: (1) Safilios-Rothschild6 has dubbed it “wives’ family sociology” since husbands may have a different view of the decision-making process; (2) self-reports are subject both to the distortions of recall and to the tendency to give socially approved responses; (3) the “scope” of the eight areas varies widely; and (4) the salience of the problem for the couple queried is conjectured on the basis of a general knowledge of the society rather than constructed empirically from reports of the respondents concerning the importance and frequency of various decisions according to their particular life circumstances. This last difficulty theoretically could be overcome, but would require considerable methodological sophistication in weighting and standardizing the actual conflicts reported so as to facilitate comparative studies.

More crucial to cross-cultural comparisons, however, is the validity of decision-making itself as a criterion of power. Here one must ask whether a decision made by one spouse runs contrary to the wishes of the other, and over what time period. It may happen that a spouse who “lost” a decision may later discover that the actual decision made did indeed conduce to his or her greater satisfaction in the long run and retroactively change his mind.* Or trade-offs may occur over the family life cycle which nullify the appraisal of the balance of power made at only one point in time. The more fundamental objection, though, lies in the equating of decision-making with power. Couples may agree on the independent domain of each or gladly abdicate responsibility even in what they view as their shared domain—indeed the struggle may be over who decides who is to decide. On the whole it would seem that Blood and Wolfe are really concerned with relative authority more than power.

Does the second main strategy of games or laboratory experiments hold more promise for cross-cultural research? These approaches have the merit of building conflict into the situation so as to provoke disagreement and consequent power struggle between spouses. Even more than decision-making, however, they pose the problem of validity or the resemblance of outcomes in these simulated situations to outcomes in everyday life. They depend upon the involvement of the couple in the game or test, as well as upon cultural norms which do not differentiate between the kinds of means that are appropriate for winning in the situation set up by the game as compared to disagreements in family matters. For example, Strodtbeck’s Revealed Differences method, previously alluded to, requests subjects who have shared experiences to make individual evaluations of them and then jointly to reconcile any differences they may have in their interpretations. More specifically, they are asked to decide which one of three families they know well best fulfilled some twenty-six conditions presented by the experimenter. The initial responses given separately by the husband and wife are compared with the single, joint decision which emerges from their subsequent discussion of each question in order to determine which spouse won the decision. It is interesting to note that talking was positively correlated with winning. The question arises, though, of whether talking more is cause or consequence of power, and whether this relationship would obtain in “real life” conflicts of presumed greater importance to the “silent sex.”

Since Strodtbeck’s pioneering work, several variants of the Revealed Differences technique, such as color-matching, have been employed. One that to some extent overcomes the problem of validity and appears adaptable to cross-cultural research is the Inventory of Marital Conflict (IMC) developed by David Olson and Robert Ryder.7 This inventory consists of eighteen case descriptions of problems likely to arise in the early years of married life of the prototypical white American middle class. Although the same essential facts concerning each case are presented in the forms administered separately to the husband and to the wife, in six cases the language is identical and in the remaining twelve the language is emotionally slanted to favor the wife’s point of view on the wife’s form and the husband’s point of view on the husband’s form. Regardless of language, half the stories appear to represent the wife, and the other half the husband, as the instigator of the problem. After registering their opinions separately as to who is primarily responsible for the problem and which spouse should modify his or her behavior to solve the problem, the couple is asked to engage in a discussion and arrive at a single joint opinion, For research that I am currently conducting I have added a question concerning the strength of their feeling about the case which will be used to weight the scores and thus help surmount the problem of saliency.† A query whether the husband or wife has had a similar problem, coupled with a conscious attempt to make the case descriptions culturally relevant, may heighten the validity of this technique in comparison to revelation of differences that may not matter very much to spouses, especially in societies in which competitive norms are not fostered, and to games, such as the SIMFAM technique employed by Straus8 in three societies, and the “two-person bargaining game” in which each operates a vehicle that must travel from separate starting points to separate destinations in the least possible time, as described by Ravich.9 Although Straus has persuasively argued the case for “experimental isomorphism,” he admits the need for “constant interplay between laboratory studies and field studies.”10 Practical considerations, however, often make interview methods more feasible than laboratory experimentation.

So far this discussion has centered on problems in the conceptualization and measurement of power with scant attention to the sources of power. I should like now to describe a unique structural and cultural setting to which the inventories of marital conflict and family values might be adapted for the purpose of investigating the relationship between the private or dyadic or domestic power of women as individuals and the social power of women as a collectivity or their status as a group. This project ties in with the normative resources theory of power propounded by Blood and Wolfe. An interesting contrast with the United States is provided by the Moshav Shitufi, a cooperative form in Israel which combines equality of income with traditional family patterns. This type of social organization represents a compromise between a kibbutz and a regular moshav. Productive work is carried out on a communal basis as in the kibbutz, but each family lives in its own home, as in the moshav, and draws up its own budget. The collective income is distributed to families according to the number of persons in the household. Men and women alike are expected to work an eight-hour day, but married women are given “credit” towards their required hours for the performance of household tasks in amounts varying with the number of children in the family. In effect, then, women are paid by the community to perform homemaking and childrearing functions. Since women are economically independent of their husbands, and kibbutz-type collectivized services are lacking, it might appear that wives have the potentiality of greater power than their husbands in the marital relationship. The very fact, however, of women’s partial or total release from collective work serves to separate them from prestigeful and policy-making positions, leaving them dependent upon a male-dominated community. This situation challenges the Marxist view of economic dependence on the husband as the chief cause of women’s inferior social position. In this type of structure husbands do not mediate any economic rewards to wives, although rewards from differential standing in the community are not to be excluded. Furthermore, there is no place for a single man without a woman to take care of him. Women, it is assumed, can cook and clean for themselves. In regard to the determinants of marital power the question arises as to which factor carries greater weight—women’s monopoly of housework and domestic services or the superior representation of men in prestigeful work and in political and economic decision-making positions in the community?

Field work relating to work satisfaction has already been conducted in two of the Moshauei Shitufiyim.11 Planning is now in progress to measure relative spousal power against a background of the comparative resources of husband and wife and the cultural expectations about the distribution of marital power. In adapting the inventories of marital conflict and family values to the special case of the Moshau Shitufi the issue of the cultural equivalence of the vignettes must be faced. In the following examples I have retained the format of the Olson and Ryder approach, but have concocted stories based on my observations and experiences during a ten-day sojourn in one of these communities in 1974.

Inventory of Marital Conflicts

Original Case Description (Non-conflict)

Bob and Frank are good friends. Janis, Bob’s wife, likes Frank but is increasingly annoyed with his unannounced and excessively long visits to their apartment, especially at mealtimes. She has suggested to Bob that he ask Frank to please phone before visiting, but her husband feels this would be insulting to his friend. Janis suggests that she might ask Frank to please phone before visiting, but this only makes her husband angry. After accusing his wife of interfering with his friendship, he refuses to discuss the matter further.

Substitute Israeli Case Description (Non-conflict)

A childless couple, Aaron and Devora, frequently visit another family, the Yaaris, who do have children, often around afternoon coffee time. The husbands like each other, but Haggit Yaari is annoyed by the constant complaints of Devora about other women’s lack of responsibility in their work assignments. She would like to tell Aaron and Devora not to come so often, but Shmuel, her husband, objects.

Original Case Description (Conflict)

Husband’s version: It is Friday evening and the Carter family has a dinner engagement, which had been made the previous week. Frank comes home a half-hour early so he can be sure to be ready on time. He showers, shaves, and is dressed and ready to leave on time. But when it is time to go, Mary is still in the bathroom combing her hair and putting on makeup. Since Mary almost always makes them late this way, Frank becomes upset. Mary retorts that she isn’t very concerned about being late since they always get where they are going sooner or later.

Wife’s version: It’s Friday evening and the Carter family has a dinner engagement, which had been made the previous week. Frank surprises his wife by getting home from work a half hour early and uses the bathroom continuously until it is almost time to leave. Since it takes Mary more than the few minutes Frank has left her to wash, comb her hair, and put on her makeup, it becomes obvious that they will be late for their appointment. Frank raises his voice and accuses her of always making them late. Mary tries to calm Frank down by saying that being a little late is not all that serious, but Frank just becomes more enraged and an argument develops.

Substitute Israeli Case Description (Conflict)

Husband’s version: Yosef wants his wife Rachel to accompany him to a meeting and in general to take a more active part in community affairs so as to set an example for the other women. Rachel, however, thinks the meeting will be boring and prefers to stay home and watch television. When his attempts to persuade her fail, Yosef leaves the house before he says anything he may regret later.

Wife’s version: Yosef wants his wife Rachel to accompany him to a meeting. Since Rachel has no experience in the branch that is presenting a problem that night, she does not feel she can make any contribution and therefore prefers to stay home and watch television. When she tries to explain her reasons to Yosef, he refuses to listen and leaves the house without saying goodbye.

An additional seven stories of the eighteen in the IMC have been recast in the spirit of cooperative communities in Israel. Obviously this adapted form will require pretesting for relevancy and degree of involvement. It will also be interesting to find out whether Moshav Shitufi members believe the discussions in which they jointly resolved their differences to be as therapeutic as Olson and Ryder report their American subjects did.

Concluding Remarks

In conclusion, this brief paper has attempted only to indicate rather than to resolve some of the problems in defining and measuring marital power, both within the confines of one society and cross-culturally. Indeed, efforts to carry out such research in social and cultural contexts that differ markedly from our own force attention to the theoretical and methodological difficulties besetting investigators whose work is confined to the American scene. A cross-cultural perspective, however, can be helpful in identifying the conditions that account for variations in power, that is, the sources of power. Although some may consider the measurement of marital power an ethnocentric enterprise, characteristic of a competitive society in which individuals are socialized to be power-seekers and to convert all relationships into a power struggle, others would justify it as one indicator of the extent to which equality of the sexes has been achieved.

Postscript: Many of the problems raised here are treated in depth in an excellent volume published after this paper was written: Cromwell, R. E. and D. H. Olson. 1975. Power in Families. New York, NY: Halsted Press (a division of John Wiley & Sons).

Notes

* An operational definition of power that included A’s ability to change either the goals or the perceptions of B would require longitudinal studies.

† I am indebted to Dr. Lenora Greenbaum for the insight that winning decisions about which one does not feel strongly indicates greater power than if one did care.

References

Weber, M. 1964. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Translated by A. M. Henderson and T. Parsons. New York, NY: The Free Press. P. 152.

Bierstedt, R. 1950. “An Analysis of Social Power.” American Sociological Review 15(6): 730-738.

Strodtbeck, F. L. 1951. “Husband and Wife Interaction over Revealed Differences.” American Sociological Review 16(8): 468-473.

Blood, R. O., Jr. and D. M. Wolfe. 1960. Husbands & Wives: The Dynamics of Married Living. New York, NY: The Free Press.

Gillespie, D. L. 1971. “Who Has The Power? The Marital Struggle.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 33(3): 445-458.

Safilios-Rothschild, C. 1969. “Family Sociology or Wives’ Family Sociology? A Cross-Cultural Examination of Decision Making.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 31(2): 290-301.

Olson, D. H. and R. G. Ryder. 1970. “Inventory of Marital Conflicts (IMC): An Experimental Interaction Procedure.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 32(3): 443-448.

Straus, M. A. and I. Tallman. 1971. “SIMFAM: A Technique for Observational Measurement and Experimental Study of Families.” Pp. 381-438 in Family Problem Solving: A Symposium on Theoretical, Methodological, and Substantive Concerns, edited by J Aldous, T. Condon, R. Hill, M. Straus, and I. Tallman. Hinsdale, IL: The Dryden Press.

Straus, M. A. 1970. “Methodology of a Laboratory Experimental Study of Families in Three Societies.” Pp. 552-577 in Families in East and West: Socialization Process and Kinship Ties. Edited by R. Hill and R. König. The Hague: Mouton.

Ravich, R. A. 1969. “The Use of an Interpersonal Game-Test in Conjoint Marital Psychotherapy.” American Journal of Psychotherapy 23(2): 217-229.

Rodman, H. 1972. “Marital Power and the Theory of Resource in Cultural Context.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 3(1): 50-69. Padan-Eisenstark, D. and H. M. Hacker. 1974. “Ideological Factors in the Selection of a Reference Group: Women in a Cooperative Community in Israel (the Moshav Shitufi).” Eighth World Congress of Sociology, Toronto, Canada. To be published.

III. Sexuality, Intimacy, and Friendships

I don’t think [my graduate school professors] took much interest in me. Probably because I didn’t sleep with them…. I was too busy. I was working at night for the BBC, I was sending news items about women’s contribution to the war effort…so I didn’t have time to fool around with the professors.

Few areas of society have undergone as rapid change as human sexuality. The number of sexuality studies has grown exponentially over the past half-century, and academic approaches to the topic now include a sharper focus on sexual diversity and queer theory. Dr. Hacker was a pioneer in this field, publishing research in the 1970s and 1980s on the sexual and non-sexual relationships between men and women.

As the self-proclaimed “world’s oldest Ph.D.,” Hacker began her graduate studies at Columbia in the early 1940s but did not officially earn her doctoral degree until 1961. When we visited her in New York City in 2011, she shared stories of inappropriate behavior perpetrated by well-known sociologists and was surprised when we’d sometimes pause to underscore the gravity of the events that she described. These were all too common occurrences in Helen’s lifetime. When asked whether she had personally experienced sexual harassment, she flippantly replied, “Well I’ve been chased around the table, if that’s what you mean.” At a professional conference she was propositioned by a department head who, when he later offered her a faculty position, told her that he would not have hired her had she accepted his proposal. As we revise these introductions, the sociological community is wrestling with its own abuses of power and allegations of sexual harassment, illustrating that academia is not insulated from these types of institutional challenges.

Hacker addressed this reality head-on through activism and public writing. She was a key member of several activist groups (and was instrumental in linking her chapter of Sociologists for Women in Society to the United Nations), marched for women’s rights in Washington, and delivered passionate speeches on top of soap boxes in the streets of New York City. She also wrote an op-ed about the sexual harassment of Indian women during her time at the University of Bangalore and—when her essay sparked outrage—replied to her critics by publishing a content analysis of the letters they had sent to the Deccan Herald.

The articles included in this section represent Hacker’s larger body of scholarship on sexuality, intimacy, and friendships. Just as she theorized about women as a minority group in her most well-known article, in “Homosexuals: Deviant or Minority Group?” (1971) she similarly argued for the conceptualization of homosexuals as a minority group. Doing so offered the analytic power not possible at a time when this group was predominantly viewed as deviant (homosexuality would continue to be listed as a mental disorder in the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders until 1987). Although some of Hacker’s claims can be rightly criticized in the context of more contemporary understandings of sexuality, she was certainly ahead of her time when it came to issues of discrimination and justice. Sociologist Tim Ortyl, in his comments during a session we organized at the University of Minnesota’s Sociological Research Institute, discussed the “forward thinking” nature of Helen’s arguments that lesbians and gay men experience collective discrimination and that homophobia (versus homosexuality) is the social problem. Tim also highlighted how Helen was well “ahead of the curve” in her advocacy for same-sex marriage and parenting rights. Over the past several decades, this piece has also been cited for introducing the term “antihomosexualism” to describe what we most frequently now refer to as heterosexism.

Hacker’s short 1981 essay, “The Future of Sexuality: A Sociologist’s View” was published a full decade later. Drawing from conversations she was having in her classrooms at Adelphi University, likely in the Sexuality in Sociological Perspective course she pioneered, Hacker predicted two future changes related to sexuality: (1) growing sexual agency among women, with lessened pressure on men to engage in sexual conquests and, as a result, increasingly similar sexual attitudes and behaviors; and (2) a widening spectrum of experiences and a less sacred outlook on sex. The practices Hacker described have become more common, but subsequent scholarship and informal conversations with our own students suggest the pressures to conform to gendered behaviors are still incredibly strong among young people today.

This section ends with Hacker’s 1981 article, “Blabbermouths and Clams: Sex Differences in Self-Disclosure in Same-Sex and Cross-Sex Friendship Dyads.” Here she analyzes intimacy and power in friendships, an area that remains under-theorized in the discipline but has recently become the subject of renewed interest among scholars of masculinity, sport, and culture. Helen candidly told us that “statistics was a horror. I didn’t care anything about it, so I liked to write narratives, stories.” Reflecting this position, her empirical analysis of 250 total interviews with members of 70 same-sex and 55 cross-sex friendship pairs presents percentages but does not test for significance or attempt to include multivariate analyses. Still, even with her aversion to the quantitative, Hacker effectively demonstrates how gender role expectations constrain men and women in their friendships with others.

Section Contents

Helen M. Hacker. 1971. “Homosexuals: Deviant or Minority Group?” Pages 65-92 in The Other Minorities: Nonethnic Collectivities Conceptualized as Minority Groups, edited by Edgar Sagarin. Waltham, MA: Ginn and Company.

Helen M. Hacker. 1981. “The Future of Sexuality: A Sociologist’s View.” Pp. 626 in Sexual Choices, edited by Gilbert D. Nass, Rober W. Libby, & Mary Pat Fisher. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Inc.

Helen M. Hacker. 1981. “Blabbermouths and Clams: Sex Differences in Self-Disclosure in Same-Sex and Cross-Sex Friendship Dyads.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 5(3): 385-401.

Homosexuals: Deviant or Minority Group?

Helen M. Hacker Originally published 1971

At no time since the Civil War has American society been so conscious of the problem of minority groups. Not only has social action acquired a new impetus in the implementation of rights for the traditionally recognized minority groups, but ever widening social categories are being proposed as candidates for minority group status. The essence of the minority group concept is that persons with some socially defined characteristics or syndrome of characteristics are denied full participation in certain social roles for which these attributes are deemed irrelevant.

The question arises, though: In whose scheme of values does this irrelevance obtain? Only when there is some cleavage of values can we speak of minority group status, because obviously if everyone agreed on the criteria for entrance into a social status, there would be equal consensus on when exclusion was warranted or when it represented discrimination.

The relevance or irrelevance of a given characteristic for a given status can be viewed both objectively and subjectively. Skin color, for example, is objectively irrelevant to performance as a physician, but subjectively, a white patient may lack confidence in a black doctor, or a black student for similar psychological reasons may learn more readily from a black teacher. Usually, the group which sees itself as having minority status stresses the functional or objective irrelevance of the trait which members possess in common, and it is the dominant group which insists on the subjective relevance of the minority attribute.

A further distinction must be made in this matter of relevance. It may not be an all-or-nothing situation. That is, some degree, for example, of physical strength or intelligence may be required for a particular job, but not as much as the job definition specifies or which would prevent mentally or physically handicapped persons from performing adequately. In this instance, following the lead of Marx and Marcuse, one might speak of surplus-discrimination.

Thus we see that the minority group problem, as Myrdal pointed out so long ago in An American Dilemma,1 lies in the conflict between social values which push toward the increasing implementation of the democratic creed and those which make for the persistence and creation of groups defined by some common and negatively evaluated characteristic. The issue centers around the relevance of this characteristic to various kinds of social participation. Relevance may represent a continuum, and minority group status consist in being assigned to an erroneous and unwarranted place on this continuum. The error can arise from an unrealistic inflation of the requirements of the status which bars otherwise capable individuals from entering that status, or from an unrealistic and erroneous perception of the capabilities of a person or group seeking entrance to it. An example of the first kind of error might be the recent case of a Negro policeman who protested that the command of fine grammatical points tested in a promotional examination would not be required in the position to which he aspired. The second kind of error is seen, for example, in an inadequate appreciation of the extent to which a physically handicapped person may be able to compensate for his defect. Those making these two kinds of errors make some pretense at least of an objective assessment of the relationship between qualification and admittance. Overriding both of these is a simple dislike or rejection of the group in question on the basis of a negative evaluation of its defining characteristics.

This view of the minority group problem permits us to apply the concept to many social categories which in the past have been considered in terms of some other organizing principle, such as the family in the case of women, and deviance for homosexuals. The practical and theoretical importance of employing the minority group designation is to identify the locus of the problem presented by the differential treatment of a socially defined group or category of persons, whether it is to be found within the group itself or in the attitudes of the environing society. Thus, homosexuals and their sympathizers are quick to refer to that category as a minority group, whereas supposedly more neutral observers, including psychiatrists and sociologists, refer to its members as deviants. Reflective of social attitudes indeed is the fact that until quite recent years, the empirical study of homosexuals, both individually and collectively, was neglected by sociologists, presumably as either too difficult or too stigmatizing. (“If you can or want to study them, you must be one,” was the unexpressed slogan.)

The studies and analyses of homosexuals which have begun to emerge in the past decade, however, are to be found under the fashionable title of “deviance,” as in “deviant behavior” or “deviant group” or “deviant subculture.” In the professional sociological literature, one finds no reference to homosexuals as a minority group. One influential text on social problems2 underscores this approach. It distinguishes between problems stemming from deficiencies in the functioning of social systems or “social disorganization,” and those arising from the failure of individuals to conform to social norms. Homosexuality is discussed in the first portion of the book, the one devoted to deviant behavior, while race and ethnic relations find their place in the part on social disorganization. In the first case the problem is seen as inducing the individual or group to conform, and in the second as persuading the society to accept.

Differences between the “minority group” and the “deviant group” terminology, however, should not be exaggerated, since the convergence between them appears to be growing, as approaches to deviance recapitulate developments in the study of minority groups. First, it can be noted that in the nineteenth century attempts to explain prejudice against minority groups were often couched in terms of their biological and/or cultural differences from dominate groups; that is, the traits of the minority constituted an adequate theory of the dislike they encountered. Modern theories, on the other hand, are more concerned with how prejudice and discrimination serve personal, social, and economic needs of the dominant group.

Similarly, sociologists of deviance, such as Becker, Lemert, and Kitsuse,3 focus more on the social processes by which individuals and groups come to be labeled as deviant, the range of reactions in crystallizing deviance in persons who are so labelled, than on the causes of deviance, defined in some absolute way, even when these causes are ascribed to “society as the patient.”

Secondly, both minority group and deviance theorists lay stress on the question of social definitions and who has the power to make them. The earlier definition of deviant behavior as conduct that objectively appears to violate a social norm is being superseded by one which calls it conduct that is perceived by others as contrary to a norm. This relativistic point of view obtains also in the case of minority groups. There may be discrepancies in the judgments of members and nonmembers as to whether the group experiences discrimination. This distinction between the objective and subjective dimensions of the minority group problem is elaborated by the writer elsewhere.4 In like manner, a person may define himself as deviant, when others do not, or vice versa. For example, Albert J. Reiss5 points out that delinquent peers (another label!) who engage in sexual transactions with male homosexuals do not define themselves as homosexuals, for which they deem elements other than homosexual behavior, in and of itself, as more crucial. In his words, they have not converted deviant acts into a deviant role. By not defining themselves as homosexuals, which to these young people is the pejorative and stigmatizing status, they in effect escape self-definition as deviant.

In the third place, a bridge can be built between the deviant and minority group concepts by viewing them as possible successive stages in the life history of individuals and groups. Merton’s differentiation between aberrant and nonconforming behavior points the way.6 The nonconformist, in contrast to the aberrant, challenges the legitimacy of the social norms he rejects, and appeals to values which he hopes will one day be embodied in these norms. One does not, however, think of the nonconformist as joining with his fellows in an organized effort for social change. It may well be that many persons in their own self-definitions move through the statuses of deviant to nonconformist to minority group members in that they progressively legitimize their own departures from accepted norms and reject the propriety of societal sanctions for their behavior. Does this process describe the development of homosexuals in American society today?

Schofield suggests that it does.7 He sketches a four-stage progression in the homosexual career: (1) discovery of sexual persuasion; (2) fears and misgivings leading to social isolation; (3) learning to lead two lives, passing back and forth between the gay and straight worlds; and (4) moving exclusively in a homosexual group, with attendant feelings of hostility to outsiders. To this, a fifth stage might be added, that of active and sometimes open participation in the homophile movement. Obviously, individuals halt at various stages in the cycle, and a minority group consciousness need not be reserved for the later stages.

What basis can be found in the social attitudes surrounding homosexuals for considering them as a minority group? Note that a homosexual may be defined as a person who is perceived by himself and/or others as being primarily sexually responsive to members of his own sex.

Mutability of the Minority Group Characteristic

The immediate stimulus for differential treatment of members of a minority group is a characteristic or cluster of characteristics imputed to them, either validly or invalidly, which are evaluated negatively. Apart from the question of the justifiability of such evaluation is the matter of the involuntary nature of the characteristic. Obviously, Negroes cannot become white (although some do pass as white, always with the fear that they may be discovered); women cannot be transformed into men (again, a few pass, but many more retain female identification while gaining male privileges); nor can Jews be reborn as non-Jews (but a few do convert, not changing their original status). However, it may be noted that all three groups can, in a favorable social climate, modify some of the traits which have been ascribed to them. In a forceful statement contending that homosexuals do constitute a minority group, Kameny does not even consider the possibility of homosexuals changing into heterosexuals, nor does he raise the question of whether homosexuals are born or made.8 Homophile organizations and many homosexuals, however, claim that homosexual inclinations either are genetic or result from irreversible childhood experiences, and in either case they are powerless with therapeutic intervention, efforts of the will or by any other means, to change them. In this respect they feel that they can no more be held responsible for their minority characteristic than can those groups whose minority status rests on a biological factor. Theoretically, Catholics could change their religion, but it is unrealistic to expect people on any large-scale basis to overthrow their earliest emotional learnings. Like other socially disapproved groups, such as the KKK or the Communist Party in the United States, homosexuals for the most part are constrained to a secrecy about their intentions and actions, but unlike these groups, in their own minds, they are not able to change their affiliation, which in their case is a sexual one.9 As a sociologist sympathetic to the symbolic interactionist approach, I tend to believe that homosexuality can be unlearned, but that the definitive answer must be left to other disciplines.

Relevance of Homosexuality to Social Participation

Further, the homophile movement and many homosexuals emphatically reject any negative evaluation of their sexual preference. They consider homosexuality to be as normal, good, and healthy as heterosexuality. To them homosexuality is not a vice, a crime, nor a disease. It is simply a preference, and, as such, should no more be made the basis of social definitions nor differential treatment than should taste in food or furniture. They would be distinguished from age groups, the physically handicapped, and the mentally retarded on the grounds that these latter groups do raise the problem of the relevance of their physical characteristics to the opportunities from which they are excluded.

Let us grant for the moment the equal desirability of heterosexuality and homosexuality, and still inquire whether any justification can be found for placing social restrictions on homosexuals. First, it must be conceded that apart from its intrinsic worth, at the present time the majority of Americans favor heterosexual, just as they would like them to remain in the faith of their fathers. To protect this latter parental right, religious instruction has been barred from the public schools, and for those who wish it, parochial schools may be substituted. In positions which call for interaction with children, it is possible for sexual orientation to be relevant. The issue for the moment is not whether homosexuals are any more likely to seduce children and adolescents than are heterosexuals, but the kind of role model which they provide and emotional nuances which they may convey. Those who have this reservation in regard to the employment of homosexuals in “sensitive” occupations do not subscribe to “diaper determinism” in the formation of the sexual self, but rather regard sexual socialization as a lifelong process marked by crucial stages or turning points, particularly in early adolescence. What is being asserted, however, is not the inevitability but the possibility of the relevance of homosexual inclinations for a limited range of jobs. Still two qualifications must be made. First, the influence of any one person on a child should not be exaggerated. Secondly, it should not be assumed that every homosexual cannot guard himself, if he wishes to do so, against exerting any sway on psychosexual development of vulnerable persons in a close or subordinate relationship to him. Reference must be made again to the concept of surplus-discrimination. When homosexuals are barred from jobs which do not involve counseling, teaching, or supervisions of the young or if they are automatically excluded even from such positions on a categorical rather than an individual basis, then support is given to their claim on unwarranted discrimination.

What can be said about the allegation that homosexuals are more prone to seduce young persons, either physically or emotionally, than are heterosexuals? Both psychological and social explanations have been given of this supposed fact. On the psychological side it is sometimes stated that the sexual impulses of homosexuals are less susceptible to postponement in the demand for immediate gratification than those of heterosexuals and indeed are of a more imperious nature, and that homosexual are prepared to take greater risks to gain that gratification. From a social or structural point of view, it is asserted that since homosexuals have access to a much smaller pool of eligible [partners] than do heterosexuals, they are constrained to make the most of every opportunity. It may be just as plausibly argued, however, that this very circumstance would cause the homosexual to “go slow” under the fear of rejection, that the incentive to approach would be more than counterbalanced by the wish to avoid social sanctions.

Indeed, according to Simon and Gagnon, “Homosexuals vary profoundly in the degree to which their homosexual commitment and its facilitation becomes the organizing principle of their lives.”10 Further, some writers, such as Hoffman,11 contend that if the social obstacles to homosexual intimacy between consenting adults were removed, any need to exploit the young would be diminished in like measure. Exception could also then be taken to the notion of the paucity of available partners. Many minority groups of smaller size, such as Jews, are largely endogamous without suffering severe sexual frustration.

So far we have been concerned with the relevance of a homosexual propensity per se for certain kinds of employment. It is often assumed, however, that homosexuality is symptomatic or expressive of personality disorders which are not directly sexual. As Becker says, “Possession of one deviant trait may have a generalized symbolic value, so that people automatically assume that its bearer possesses other undesirable traits allegedly associated with it.”12 Thus, homosexuals may have been accused of being immature, irresponsible, overly impulsive, narcissistic, hedonistic, dependent, negativistic, and so on through a catalogue of traits in keeping with the “arrested development” theory of homosexuality.13 Whether homosexuality in and of itself constitutes a personality disorder is irrelevant to the consideration of homosexuals as a minority group, unless one can specify relevant behavioral manifestations of this so-called disorder. There is no evidence, however, to suggest that homosexuality as such prevents anyone from performing adequately in social and non-sexual roles. To date, psychological tests have not revealed any conclusive differences in the overall patterns of adjustment of comparable groups of homosexual and heterosexual males and females. That the homosexual career is fraught with such difficulties in our society as to cause some personality distortion cannot be denied and does not serve to distinguish homosexuals from other minority groups. A compromise position would be that a homosexual outcome may or may not be indicative of neurosis, and that any judgment on this point must be predicated on deep insight into individual cases. Certainly no blanket indictment of homosexuals as a group or prejudgment of individual homosexuals is warranted. So the upshot of this inquiry into the relevance of homosexual preference as a minority characteristic is that, given the prevailing sentiment endorsing heterosexuality in our society, a person’s homosexual proclivities are relevant only when there is some reason to believe in individual cases that he will exert an undesired influence on impressionable youth.

Homosexuals Yes, Homosexualism No

Representatives of the homophile movement assert that homosexuals are not accorded equal rights until homosexuality gains equal status with heterosexuality. As long as social values give preference to heterosexuality, homosexuals will suffer damaged self-esteem from being regarded at best as objects of compassion and condescension. Kameny14 makes an explicit parallel between anti-homosexualism and anti-Semitism, arguing that both represent ideological outlooks which must be overcome before individual homosexuals and Jews can feel secure in their equal humanity with others. This comparison seems to be a false analogy. In the twentieth century and in the United States at least, prejudice against Jews is not based on any adherence to Judaism as a religion, but on personality traits attributed to Jews on a biological basis. If some Jews adopt other religions to avoid discrimination, it is for the purpose of concealing their Jewish birth, not their religious beliefs. American Jews are not and have no need of propagandizing to place Judaism on a par with Christianity. Rather their problem is to counter a negative stereotype which has nothing to do with religion. In contrast, the minority characteristic which defines the homosexual is his very homosexuality. To the extent that the homosexual image has accretions which do not inhere in homosexuality per se, the problems of Jews and homosexuals are similar. Both must fight the ascription of false attributes.

A closer parallel to the homosexual situation is found in the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and individual Catholics. In the recent past, opposition to certain doctrines, especially the social teachings, of the Catholic Church tended to increase the prejudice and discrimination manifested against Catholic individuals, even though these two aspects of anti-Catholic feelings are logically distinct. As the Roses state, “It should be possible for people to oppose each other’s doctrines much as do the adherents of two political parties without hating them personally and trying to hurt them materially.”15 In like manner, it should be possible to defend the rights of homosexual individuals without endorsing homosexuality. Granting equal opportunity to homosexuals need not be viewed as giving aid and comfort to homosexuality. Nor should homosexuals be asked to change their sexual persuasion any more than Catholics need change their religious persuasion. Homosexual organizations, like the Catholic Church, can be left free to proselytize, but social acceptance of homosexuality as being “just as good” as heterosexuality need not be a precondition of social acceptance of homosexuals as fully equal human beings.

There is one sense, however, in which the lower evaluation of homosexuality vis-à-vis heterosexuality does lend credence to the neurotic label so frequently attached to homosexuals. It has often been noted that homosexual unions are frequently of a transient and superficial character, exacting few of the responsibilities and obligations of heterosexual marriage. Hoffman believes that the withholding of community support provides an adequate explanation.16 To some observers the neurotic aspect of homosexuality lies in the lack of deep monogamous commitment rather than in the choice of sexual partner; and, in their eyes, part of the appeal of the homosexual way of life arises from this fact. One might suppose that the homosexual community substitutes for the larger society in providing regulatory norms, but studies of such communities in San Francisco and other areas reveal that it acts rather to legitimize instability.

It is not to be assumed that marriage and parenthood represent the achievement of psychological maturity for every individual, even if he be heterosexual. The criteria for mental health vary according to the aspirations and potentialities of the individual, but most psychologists agree that the ability to love someone other than the self is one of the characteristics of the mature personality. Whether the denial to homosexuals of a “normal” family life constitutes an important discrimination against them or an escape from the tasks of adulthood depends on the evaluation made of family institutions and their relationship to other important social structures. At the present time societal pressures confront the homosexual, especially the male, with a difficult dilemma. Patterns of sustained living together may testify to his psychological adjustment, but at the same time remove him from the possibility of fulfilling the culturally valued role of husband and father. This dilemma could be overcome if a system governing homosexual relationships, parallel to that governing heterosexual relations, were evolved.17 This institutionalization of homosexuality would involve such matters as marriage and divorce, age of consent, and the rights, duties, and role differentiation of homosexual partners. Further, children might be made available to homosexual couples either through adoption in the case of males or also through artificial (or natural, if so desired) insemination in the case of females. An alternative possibility is bigamy or a ménage à trois, permitting a man to have both a man-wife and a woman-wife, and similarly for a woman; or the man could be the husband to a woman and the “wife” to a man, even in the manner of Caesar. Of course homosexual marriage need not exclude the possibility of homosexual or heterosexual affairs, any more than heterosexual marriage does. Indeed, occasional homosexual “lapses” might enable bisexuals to perform in heterosexual marital and parental roles.

Theories of Anti-Homosexualism

Since a radical change in public attitudes is prerequisite to any institutionalization of homosexuality, it becomes pertinent to inquire into the social and psychological factors which enter into contemporary negative feelings. Conscious rejection of homosexuality is so strong and deep that few persons feel called upon to rationalize or justify their sentiments as they do in the case of racial and religious minorities.

The most prevalent explanation in modern sociology stems from the structural-functional approach to social institutions, and is best exemplified by Kingsley Davis.18 He holds that every society, in the interest of social order, must develop some set of social norms to regulate the powerful libidinal drive to prevent sexual exploitation and a sexual war of each against all, and to channel sexuality into socially useful ends. Davis writes:

In evolving an orderly system of sexual rights and obligations, societies have linked this system with the rest of the social structure, particularly with the family. They have also tended to economize by having only one such system, which has the advantage of giving each person only one role to worry about in his sex life—namely, a male or female role—which can thus be ascribed and will vary only with age. Homosexuality in itself cannot lead to reproduction and the formation of normal family life; it also involves, for one partner or the other, a reversal of sex role, though sex is one of the most fundamental bases for status ascription. A male who assumes the feminine role, or a woman who assumes the masculine role, is looked down upon—interestingly enough, even by homosexuals themselves.19

Davis does not think that a society can at the same time equally foster durable sexual unions between men and women and between persons of the same sex. Agricultural, handicraft societies had to protect the family in order to achieve a birth rate which was higher than the death rate, and so children were imbued with the notion of a complementary division of functions between the two sexes and the attitudes and behaviors appropriate to their own sex. These early emotional learnings about sex and gender form the core of the personality, and are strongly resistant to change. Thus, negative attitudes toward homosexuality are the expectable consequences of the socialization process which itself fulfilled a functional prerequisite of this type of society.

The Industrial Revolution, however, with concomitant advances in medicine and public sanitation, has lowered the death rate, modified the sexual division of labor, separated recreation from procreation, and in general altered the circumstances of life from which the traditional sex mores, with their proscription of homosexuality, grew. Does continued disapproval of homosexuality then represent a cultural lag? No, says Davis; it now serves another function: “…in urbanized, mobile industrial societies, familial relationships seem to be particularly valued because they are virtually the only ones that are both personal and enduring; marital and parental ties therefore receive strong sentimental support…. Homosexual relationships are notoriously ephemeral by comparison.”20 True, withdrawal of social disapproval and the normative regulation of homosexual relations, it has been claimed by some, might render homosexual unions more durable and a viable alternative to the heterosexual family,21 but the complications of such a dual system, even greater than those of the present single system, make it a doubtful prospect.

At the opposite end of ideology from Davis, Marcuse22 too has a functional explanation, a kind of synthesis of Freud and Marx, of the interdiction of homosexuality. He puts forward the thesis that contemporary industrial societies are characterized by a “suprarepressive organization of societal relationships under a principle which is the negation of the pleasure principle,” and which harnesses sexuality in alienated labor under an irrational authority. Homosexuality, symbolized by Orpheus, represents a protest “against the repressive order of procreative sexuality.” Orpheus, according to Marcuse, stands for a “fuller Eros” and the liberation of the world. In this view, the privilege group which exercises domination opposes sexual pleasure which is not a means for an end.

Homosexuals, for Marcuse, serve as a revolutionary vanguard in freeing society from genital tyranny and leading the way to a resexualization of the whole body of man. Only such a polymorphous perverse body, he believes, can resist being deformed into an instrument of labor. Those readers who may think that homosexuality partakes more of the “perverse” than of the “polymorphous,” in Freud’s phrase, may turn to another representative of the “Freudian left,”23 Norman O. Brown, for a more consistent interpretation. Brown believes that any form of sexual organization, including homosexuality, is repressive and that the full measure of human happiness must be sought in the anarchic eroticism of early infancy.

Both views postulate a societal need to limit sexual gratification in the interest of social order, though differing in their evaluation of contemporary social organization, but from either standpoint one can understand how deviations from strongly internalized sexual norms arouse defensive, rejecting attitudes. The strength and irrationality of majority reactions stem also from an important difference between homosexuals and the more traditional minority groups. Such traits as skin color, hair form, and dress, for example, are used by the dominate group mainly to identify a minority which may then be disliked in terms of the stereotype ascribed to it. Repressed desires of the dominate group may be projected onto the minority group in a symbolic way, but in this two-step process there is no real fear on the part of a white, for instance, that he will turn into a black, or that a Christian will become a Jew. Feelings about homosexuals, however, are not symbolic. The imputation of homosexuality to others presents a real threat to the self-conceived heterosexual. His conscious feelings of contempt, disgust, repugnance, pity, scorn, amusement, or even boredom and indifference may serve as insulation against contact with an ego-alien part of himself. The homosexual opens old wounds concerning feelings about parents, establishment of sexual identity, and unresolved negative Oedipal feelings, among others. And by the same token, homosexuals’ conscious hostility toward heterosexuals may represent not only a response to their negative attitudes and discriminatory treatment, but also a defense against their own heterosexual components, unresolved positive Oedipal feelings, and so on. There is more tension in the reciprocal attitudes of heterosexuals and homosexuals than in most minority group-dominant group relationships, because of the ambivalence centering in the power of the sex drive. Also, as mentioned above, in the absence of institutionalization of homosexual relationships, the heterosexual may envy the homosexual’s freedom from the responsibilities of sexual expression which are foisted upon the heterosexual, while the homosexual may envy the stability, security, and affection in the other group. To the extent that segregation of masculine and feminine social roles persists, the male homosexual is free from the burden of family support and the female homosexual from the maintenance of a home and the rearing of children. But since these activities imply privileges as well as obligations, one might equally say that the homosexual is shut out from them. In short, the plight of the homosexual in American society must be seen as a result of a complex interplay of psychological and social forces.

In the case of any large minority group, its own members constitute an important segment of the social environment. Further, the nature of the minority characteristic serves to define the kinds of social categories to be placed in juxtaposition or in opposition to the minority group. Thus, there are many religious, occupational, and racial groups in this county, but only, with minor exceptions, two sexes. If for the purpose of analytic simplicity, one ignores bisexuals and asexuals, the relevant categories, defined by sex and preferred sexual object, emerge as: male heterosexual, female heterosexual, male homosexual, and female homosexual. Table 1 suggests, in the form of an imaginative reconstruction, both negative and positive, conscious and unconscious, reciprocal attitudes among these four groups, with the exception of heterosexual reactions to heterosexuals, which would be irrelevant in this context.

Objective Evidence of Prejudice Against Homosexuals

There is little need to dwell on discriminations against homosexuals. In the words of Kitsuse, “Individuals who are publicly identified as homosexuals are frequently denied the social, economic, and legal rights of ‘normal’ males. Socially they may be treated as objects of amusement, ridicule, scorn, and often fear; economically they may be summarily dismissed from employment; legally they are frequently subject to interrogation and harassment by police.”24 While fewer disabilities are visited upon female homosexuals, they too may feel forced by public attitudes either to a humiliating concealment with concomitant fear of exposure or to a renunciation of many high status jobs, gratifying social contacts, and ordinary human respect.

Table 1. Reciprocal Attitudes of Heterosexuals and Homosexuals

MALE HETEROSEXUAL

1. Toward male homosexual

a. Conscious contempt, distrust.

b. Fear of seduction attempts.

c. Secret and unacceptable attraction.

d. Envy of “bachelor” life.

e. Seen as vicarious expression of own hostility to females, especially own mother.

f. Seen as vicarious expression of repressed love and contempt for own father.

g. Serves to reinforce own feelings of masculinity.

2. Toward female homosexual

a. Seen as embodiment of aggression because she rejects his masculinity, the power of his difference, source of humiliation.

b. Presents threat of castration, competitor in nonsexual areas, out to get his balls.

c. Seen as competitor for females.

d. Serves as challenge to conquest.

e. Expression of identification with female role so as to be passive and protected.

f. Feeling of relief at not having sexual and other demands made upon him.

FEMALE HETEROSEXUAL

1. Toward male homosexual

a. Resentment of denial of her femininity.

b. Rival in competition for men.

c. Supposition of hostility toward her.

d. Passive, so less threatening, can relax and be friendly.

e. Regret at diminution of male market.

f. Fears insight into “feminine wiles.”

g. Personal disappointment, if attracted.

2. Toward female homosexual

a. Fear of being seduced.

b. Pique, if no passes.

c. Strain of managing friendship while avoiding over-rebuff.

d. Envy of her aggression and freedom to act like a male.

e. No worry about her as a sexual rival.

f. Fears her competition in business and professions.

g. Some promise of maternal warmth and protection.

h. Reinforcement of own feelings of femininity.

MALE HOMOSEXUAL

1. Toward male homosexual

a. Bond of sympathy, in-group complicity.

b. Sexual and social competitor.

c. Sees conflict of friend and lover roles.

d. Hostility in intimate relationship, arising from competition in playing masculine roles, who will be the boss.

e. Fear of exposure by association or actual betrayal.

f. Feels contempt, if too effeminate, and fears contempt as symbol of self-hatred.

g. Opportunity for sexual gratification.

h. Relief from social pretence, opportunity to express feminine interests and identifications.

2. Toward female homosexual

a. Seen as embodiment of everything hateful in women, the arch-usurper of masculinity.

b. Contempt for self is projected onto her.

c. Potential accomplice in heterosexual masquerade.

d. Comrade in protest movement.

e. Trustworthy confidant.

f. Party and bar associate.

3. Toward male heterosexual

a. Feelings of inferiority and impotence vis-à-vis him.

b. Envy arising from self-hatred.

c. Desire for friendship and acceptance.

d. Symbol of sexual climbing.

e. Feelings of attraction to “trade.”

f. Feelings of own superiority from presumed greater self-insight.

4. Toward female heterosexual

a. Fear of excessive demands on her part.

b. Wish for sisterly or motherly affection.                 

c. Seen as rival for men.

d. Fear of her exploitation of him.

e. Wish for “understanding” and support in masculine role.

FEMALE HOMOSEXUAL

1. Toward male homosexual

a. Projected self-disdain; justification of contempt for men: “You are a man?”

b. Hostility for presumed anti-feminism.

c. Maternal compassion.

d. Seen as potential friend and confidante.

e. No danger of masculine demands.

f. No threat nor rival.

2. Toward female homosexual

a. Same as items a, b, c, e, g, and h in attitudes of male homosexual toward male homosexual.

b. Embarrassment, if too masculinized.

c. Hostility in intimate relationships arising from competition as to who will play feminine, protected role.

d. Opportunity to alternate mother and child roles.

e. Jealousy of her in regard to both sexes.

3. Toward male heterosexual

a. Deep-seated, intense feelings of competition, rival both in business and in love.

b. Pride in ability to “lead him on,” mixed with contempt for him as an insensitive simpleton.

c. Desire for brotherly good friend and pal.

d. Desire for affectionate, protective father.

e. Fear of derision as not a “real woman.”

f. Narcissistic wish to be desired.

4. Toward female heterosexual

a. Strong attraction, coupled with fear of rejection.

b. Fear of loss of friendship.

c. Mixed envy and contempt for her presumed feminine identification.

d. Maternal more than competitive feeling; a projected identification like that of a proud mother for a good representative of the female sex.

e. Jealousy toward and hatred of frustrating object.

Homosexuals feel that the root of their problem lies in social attitudes toward them. The question may be raised of the extent of this social prejudice. Is it true, as Cory states, that homosexuals “live in an atmosphere of universal rejections...of a social world that jokes and sneers at every turn?”25 

To my knowledge, no survey data on a national scale exist on the attitudes of a representative sample of Americans toward homosexuals. Several small studies and my own informal interviewing on the subject, however, indicate that the present social climate is more favorable than many homosexuals may believe. Kitsuse, for example, interviewed seven hundred college undergraduates in regard primarily to how they came to think certain individuals they had encountered were homosexual and how they reacted to this definition of them. He found that a “live and let live” response was fairly common, and in no case was moral indignation or revulsion communicated to the putative homosexual:

...the interview materials suggest that while reactions toward persons defined as homosexuals tend to be negatively toned, they are far from homogeneous as to the forms or intensity of the sanctions invoked and applied. Indeed, reactions which may appear to the sociological observer or to the deviant himself as negative sanctions, such as withdrawal or avoidance, may be expressions of embarrassment or a reluctance to share the burden of the deviant’s problems... In view of the extreme negative sanctions against homosexuality which are posited on theoretical grounds, the generally mild reactions of our subjects are striking.26

Some limitations on the usefulness of this study must be noted. First, as the investigator himself acknowledges, college students may have more liberal views than less educated segments of the population, but the study does indicate that reactions to homosexuals are not uniform. This very unpredictability of response, as in the case of the marginal man, may contribute to the psychological tension of the homosexual in his perpetual conflict between the wish to reveal and the need to conceal.

Secondly, the respondents told of their experiences with homosexuals who were in varying kinds of relationships and degrees of closeness to them, ranging from stranger to a roommate. But except for the ever-present danger of arrest if caught in same blatant behavior, the homosexual is most concerned about the reactions of persons of long acquaintanceship or in important relationships to him. His problem is to keep his heterosexual and homosexual audiences separate. In view of this situation, it would be most interesting to administer social distance tests to see how a broad spectrum of Americans feel about homosexuals in a variety of relationships. Social distance tests, however, may provide information as much on the respondent’s estimation of the social standing of homosexuals as on his own attitudes. People who are themselves free of prejudice toward homosexuals may nevertheless feel impelled to act in accordance with their perception of the social climate in a manner reminiscent of Merton’s distinction between fair-weather and all-weather liberals.27 A white mother, for example, may frown on her daughter’s dating blacks, not because she personally objects, but because she anticipates social difficulties in an interracial marriage; or complicating this matter, may give one of these as the reason (both to herself and/or to others) when the other is the genuine motivation for the objection. Similarly, a homosexual may not be employed or retained in certain positions because the employer anticipates adverse reaction from his clients and other employees or, if only the employer is aware of the applicant’s homosexuality, he fears that the homosexual may be constrained to acts of disloyalty or malfeasance under the threat of disclosure.

While social attitudes toward homosexuals may be less punitive than formerly, it is probable that few Americans consider homosexuals to be “normal.” According to a 1965 study of a fairly representative sample of 180 persons, homosexuals were mentioned most frequently in answer to a question asking the respondent to name “deviants.”28 Other terms applied to homosexuals were, in rank order: “Sexually abnormal,” “perverted,” “mentally ill,” “maladjusted,” and “effeminate.” Undoubtedly, considerable modification of prevailing attitudes must occur before the status of the homosexual in the popular mind can be changed from that of deviant to non-conformist, let alone member of an unjustly treated minority group.

Frequency of Minority Group Feelings Among Homosexuals

Do homosexuals have a minority group consciousness? Again, systematic data are largely lacking. We do not know what percentage of homosexuals accept the “sick” or “deviant” label, with accompanying self-depreciation; nor how many regard homosexuality as a psychological and social adjustment commensurate with heterosexuality, and react to a hostile environment with resentment. The development of a homophile movement attests to a self-definition of minority status on the part of some homosexuals, but the proportion of the total homosexual population which participates in or is even aware of such organizations has been estimated as less than one percent.29

How homosexuals feel about being homosexual appears to be a matter of controversy. It is popularly supposed that they are ridden with feelings of guilt, inferiority, and self-hatred, as well as a defensive converse of these feelings. Indeed, current literary and dramatic productions by or about homosexuals seem to indicate these classic minority group symptoms. Thus, one of the characters in Mart Crowley’s play The Boys in the Band exclaims, “Show me a happy homosexual and I’ll show you a gay corpse.” Writing in the New York Times, Donn Teal,30 however, questions whether homosexuals are really anguished and protests the distorted way homosexuals are portrayed in this play, objecting particularly to the sadistic games and self-degrading confessions. He claims that the wail, “If we could just learn not to HATE ourselves so much!” represents only a minority of homosexuals. Without multiplying instances, it can be said that in the majority of novels, plays, and films dealing with homosexuals, even when authored by homosexuals, no happy outcome is given to the homosexual way of life and the homosexual characters rarely emerge as human beings with whom the average person can identify.

Letters to New York Times and discussions on radio and television programs testify to the wish of many homosexuals to change the public image from a self-demeaning to a self-respecting one. One recent television program, with Aline Saarinen as hostess, had two homosexuals disavowing any wish to be “cured.”31

Female homosexual: “Well, most of us do not want to be cured because we don’t regard our activities as disease. If I enjoy going to bed with another woman, and this is pleasurable, and does not debilitate me in any way, if I can fulfill my functions on the job, and enjoy myself, and subjectively feel that I am having a good time, I don’t see where the disease is...”

Male homosexual: “I have a nice relationship with another man, which has been going on for some time. I have a very nice group of friends. I function well. I make a living, and I do the things I want to do. I’m not very unhappy. I don’t feel like I’m sick...”

However, Sagarin found that many homosexuals described themselves or others as neurotic, sick, or disturbed.32

Regardless of psychological or moral self-evaluations or commitment to organized forms of social protest, many homosexuals manifest a feeling of group belongingness by their participation in a homosexual community. Such a community serves, in varying degrees, the following functions for individual homosexuals.33

It provides a source of social support and validation of a positive self-image.

It offers a shared set of norms and practices to overcome anomie.

It confers a sense of identity in a world in which traditional group identifications are crumbling.

It serves as a sexual marketplace.

It affords opportunities for friendship, recreation, and other social gratifications which are not directly sexual.

It permits the enjoyment of “camp” behavior in self or in others.

It acts as an agency of social control in protecting individual homosexuals from impulsive sexual “acting out.”

It represents a new kind of opportunity structure for upward social mobility.

It reduces anxiety and conflicts, thus freeing the individual to perform more productively outside the community, particularly by relieving the tensions of concealment and fear of exposure by those who pass back and forth in two worlds.

It dispenses social services to meet individual problems and crises.

The homosexual community, however, differs in important ways from other communities. Among the more traditional minority groups of race and ethnicity, a subculture is perpetuated by residential segregation and family inheritance. The homosexual community, based only on a similarity of sexual interest—though residential clusters of homosexuals exist—has very limited content. A shared sexual commitment is not sufficient to transcend larger social and cultural differences. For very few participants can this community be anything approximating a “total society.” In fact, immersion in the homosexual community often entails the sacrifice of family and friends in the larger community. Considering the cultural impoverishment of the homosexual community, the price of dropping the sexual mask may be too high.

Summary

This discussion should conclude with tentative answers to two questions. First, to what extent do homosexuals fit the definition of a minority group? Secondly, does viewing homosexuals as a minority rather than as a deviant group bring out sociologically important aspects of their situation which previously may have been obscured?

In regard to the first question, it may be said that homosexuals are the object of collective discrimination in that they are barred from social opportunities for which their sexual preference is functionally and objectively irrelevant. Further, they do possess in large measure many of the attributes of the more traditional racial, religious, and ethnic minorities: they resent the discrimination and pejorative attitudes directed against them; they have a sense of group identification and have developed a separate subculture with a distinctive argot, meeting places, leadership, and protective organizations; they often experience a conflict between their class status and their “caste” status; they are actively seeking to modify the present accommodation between them and heterosexuals which tends to segregate them occupationally and to drive them underground; they are subject to the psychological ravages of marginality since they can neither fully accept not completely disavow adverse social judgments of their sexual inclinations and activities; they have developed a double consciousness which can fix on the hypocrisy and sham of a sexually-repressive society, as well as a defensive ideology which legitimizes their claim to equal moral and psychological worth.

They differ from other minority groups in the following ways: the continuing involuntary nature of their minority characteristic is a controversial matter; they seek rather than are born into a minority subculture; their minority status is not based on birth or family inheritance, and the characteristic which gives them this status is direct rather than symbolic; their way of life rarely has religious sanction; differential treatment of them does not arouse as much guilt in the dominate group and indeed there is less value consensus regarding them; measurement of social distance toward them, as in the case of women but for a different reason, cannot specify marriage as the level of greatest intimacy; reciprocal minority-dominate group attitudes involve more complex cultural and psychological factors; the shared interest which unites the homosexual community is more specific and limited and thus less capable of superseding class and cultural divergences than the more diffuse bond which unites some ethnic and racial groups; and, finally, one of the strategies suggested to overcome social opposition, namely, the institutionalization of homosexual relationships, is unique to this group.

Turning to the second question, the tradition has been to treat homosexuals under the sociology of deviance, in which they were considered the social problem, similar to prostitutes, drug addicts, alcoholics, and the mentally ill. They constituted a social problem in the sense that their existence threatened strong social values. This definition of the problem posed by homosexuals suggested a two-pronged attack of societal prevention and individual cure: on the one side to determine what kind of social engineering would prevent persons from becoming homosexual, such as allowing greater freedom of heterosexual expression in early years, fostering less rigid social sex-role differentiation, diverting the energies of “close-binding” mothers into outside employment, and encouraging fatherhood, and, on the other hand, to seek therapeutic approaches which would transform homosexuals into heterosexuals.

Conceptualizing homosexuals as a minority group shifts the focus of attention from their libidinal drives to their social interaction with their own egos, other homosexuals, and heterosexuals, and to the various life styles they have adopted in reaction to their sexual proclivities and dominant group attitudes toward them. In this manner the minority group concept has greater explanatory power than the deviance concept. It sheds light on the problems of managing a homosexual career, on the characteristic features of homosexual unions, on the attraction and avoidance aspects of the homosexual community, on the tension between “secret” and “overt” homosexuals, and on a host of social phenomena which flow from the minority status of homosexuals. It also redefines the social problem as residing mainly in prejudicial attitudes towards homosexuals.

Consideration of homosexuals as a minority group opens the way for a fruitful reexamination of the minority group concept, suggesting extensions and refinements. Under what social conditions do new minority groups emerge? What kinds of societies are characterized by a continual process of the establishment and disestablishment of minority groups? Do findings with respect to one group stimulate new insights in regard to other groups? It would seem that in a pluralistic society, crisscrossed with conflict, with a variety of value standpoints, the relativism and the subjectivism connoted by the minority group approach represents a closer approximation to social facts than the assumption of an absolute and objective standard of values implicit in the notion of deviance.

Notes

1 Gunnar Myrdal. 1944. An American Dilemma. New York: Harper.

2 Robert K. Merton and Robert A. Nisbet, eds. 1966. Contemporary Social Problems. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.

3 See Howard S. Becker. 1964. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press of Glencoe; Becker, ed. 1951. The Other Side: Perspectives on Deviance. New York: Free Press; Edwin M. Lemert. 1951. Social Pathology. New York: McGraw-Hill; Lemert, Edwin M. 1967. Human Deviance, Social Problems and Social Control. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall; John I. Kitsuse. 1962. “Societal Reaction to Deviant Behavior.” Social Problems 9 (Winter): 247-56.

4 Helen Mayer Hacker. 1951. “Women as a Minority Group.” Social Forces 30 (October): 60-69.

5 Albert J. Reiss, Jr. 1962. “The Social Integration of Queers and Peers.” Social Problems 9 (Winter): 247-56.

6 Robert K. Merton, “Social Problems and Sociological Theory,” in Merton and Nisbet, eds., op, cit., pp. 808-11.

7 M. Schofield. 1965. Sociological Aspects of Homosexuality: A Comparative Study of Three Types of Homosexuals. Boston: Little, Brown.

8 Franklin E. Kameny. 1971. “Homosexuals as a Minority Group.” Pp. 50-65 in E. Sagarin, ed., The Other Minorities: Nonethnic Collectivities Conceptualized as Minority Groups. Waltham, MA: Ginn and Company.

9 The theme and the analogy are developed by Edward Sagarin, Structure and Ideology in an Association of Deviants, unpublished doctoral dissertation, New York University, 1966.

10 William Simon and John H. Gagon. 1967. “Homosexuality: The Formulation of a Sociological Perspective.” Journal of Health & Social Behavior 8 (September): 180.

11 Martin, Hoffman. 1968. The Gay World New York: Basic Books.

12 Becker, Outsiders, op. cit., p. 33.

13 The view that homosexuality is symptomatic of personality disorder is well put in a letter by Dr. Morton Friedman of the New Jersey College of Medicine, published in the New York Times on January 28. 1968:

While we can agree with the view recently expressed in “Homosexuals and Civil Rights” that the arbitrary abridgement of the civil rights on homosexuals is a wrong long practiced by our society, we must be careful not to be seduced into accepting the idea that the only difference between the homosexual and the heterosexual is the choice of sexual object.

One of the problems revealed by a study of the psychological dynamics in the development of the homosexuals is his (or her) poor identification with parental figures and therefore with the moral values of adult society. This poor identification leads to an arrest of psychosexual development, “immaturity,” evidenced in many aspects of both thought and behavior. In general, the homosexual tends to have poor impulse control and his values tend to be both narcissistic and hedonistic.

His tolerance for frustration, for delay of gratification, is much less than that of the average heterosexual, and this frequently leads to a compulsive quality in his sexual drive which is seldom seen in adult heterosexuals. Because of this, contrary to the anonymous opinion expressed in letters recently, the homosexual teacher is much more likely to become involved with his male students than the heterosexual teacher is with female students. The same likelihood has also been noted with female homosexual teachers.

The backlash of society’s persecution of homosexuals is being expressed today by our being too ready to declare all values as being equal in worth to humanity, even in the instance in which one set of values represents the infantile needs of individuals and is therefore harmful to a mature society. Much of the display of narcissism and the tendency toward irresponsible hedonism in contemporary society is rooted in and sustained by the homosexual “value system.”

14 Kameny, op. Cit.

15 Arnold and Caroline Rose. 1948. America Divided: Minority Group Relations in the United States. New York: Knopf.

16 See Hoffman, op. cit. This psychiatrist believes that “the social prohibition against homosexuality” is largely responsible for the impermanence of male homosexual relations. “To put the matter in its most simple form, the reason that males who are homosexually inclined cannot form stable relations with each other is that society does not want them to” (p. 76).

17 This discussion is based, though with a different bias, on Kingsley Davis, “Sexual Behavior,” in Merton and Nisbet, eds., op. cit., pp. 341-42.

18 Davis, ibid., pp. 323-25. Davis’s statement that even homosexuals look down upon the homosexual partner who assumes the role of the opposite sex is open to question. Given the dominance of masculine values in our society, it is probable that a man is exposed to greater social opprobrium than a woman.

19 Ibid, p.339.

20 Ibid, p.341.

21 Hoffman, op. cit.

22 Herbert, Marcuse. 1961. Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. New York: Vintage Books. See particularly Chapter 8, “The Images of Orpheus and Narcissus,” pp. 144-56.

23 See Paul A. Robinson. 1969. The Freudian Left: Wilhelm Reich, Geza Roheim, Herbert Marcuse. New York: Harper & Row, esp. pp. 207, 208, 228.

24 Kitsuse, op. cit, p. 250.

25 Donald, Webster Cory. 1951. The Homosexual in America. New York: Greenberg, p. 12.

26 Kitsuse, op. cit., p. 255.

27 Robert K. Merton. 1949. “Discrimination and the American Creed.” Pp. 99-126 in Discrimination and National Welfare, edited by Robert M. MacIver. New York: Harper.

28 J. L. Simmons. 1965. “Public Stereotypes of Deviants.” Social Problems 13: 223-32.

29 For a discussion of the homophile movement, and of the extent of support that it has in homosexual circles, see Edward Sagarin. 1969. Odd Man In: Societies of Deviants in America. Chicago: Quadrangle.

30 New York Times, June 1, 1969.

31 New York Times, March 30, 1969, p. 21 of Section 2, Arts and Leisure.

32 Sagarin, Odd Man In, op. cit., and in greater detail, Sagarin, Structure and Ideology in an Association of Deviants, op. Cit.

33 This list has been culled from the following sources: Maurice Leznoff and William A. Westley. 1956. “The Homosexual Community.” Social Problems 3 (April): 257-63; Simon and Gagnon, op. cit.; Hooker. 1967. “The Homosexual Community.” Pp. 167-84 in Sexual Deviance, edited by John H. Gagnon and William Simon. New York: Harper & Row; Nancy Achilles, “The Development of the Homosexual Bar as an Institution,” in idem, pp.228-44; Simon and Gagnon, “The Lesbians: A Preliminary Overview,” in idem, pp. 247-82; Edwin M. Schur. 1965. Crimes Without Victims. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, pp. 85-88; and Hoffman, op. cit., pp. 43-63.

The Future of Sexuality: A Sociologist’s View

Helen M. Hacker Originally published 1981

Dealing in futures is always a risky business. Is it safe to extrapolate from present trends and predict incremental changes? Or will unforeseen events cause their reversal? Conceivably, cataclysmic change could transmute the sexual scene in unimaginable ways. I have no recourse but to take the first option and base my projections on discussion in my sexuality courses over the past five years. From this perspective I see two themes gaining greater force in the next decade or so.

The first is a growing convergence in the attitudes and behaviors of females and males. As they achieve economic, political, and social parity with men, women will be no more—and no less—merchants of sex than men. The old adage that girls trade sex for love and boys trade love for sex is rapidly becoming obsolete. Young women today are being socialized by their peers, if not by their parents and teachers, to acknowledge their sexual desires as fully and as frankly as young men. They feel free to pursue men openly and to take the initiative in arranging sexual encounters. They have no need to hoard sex, lest it be squandered or extorted. Marriage is no longer viewed as the only avenue to financial, emotional, and social security as young women increasingly become as serious in their occupational commitments as young men.

Partly in response to the changing status of women and partly arising from their own redefinitions of the masculine role, men, on their side, are being relieved of the necessity for sexual conquest and from regarding sexual inexperience as an asset in women they respect. As the sexual economy becomes one of abundance rather than of scarcity, men do not feel constrained to seize every sexual opportunity. Moreover, they are learning, as women always have, how to say “no” in a nice way. Also, like women, they are developing greater sensitivity in their “sex-making” in an effort to please both themselves and their partners.

An important aspect of this new tendency towards androgyny is an ethic of openness and full communication between partners. In ranking a series of vignettes presented on the first day of class, over the years students explained their choices in terms of honesty rather than the degree of conformity to traditional mores. For example, a homosexual pair living together openly was more approved than a secret adulterer. Parenthetically, I may add that changing the sex of the protagonist in these stories caused little change in the ratings—i.e., the double standard seems to be on the wane. Commitment, though not necessarily sexual exclusivity, will continue to be valued, and as much by men as by women. This attitude also enters into student downgrading of adultery in comparison to mate swapping.

The second main current I wish to discuss is a revaluation of sexuality itself. Paradoxically, I feel that sexual expression will be both more important and less important than it has been in the past. I intend “less” in the sense of being less sacred and not ideally confined to monogamous relationships—that is, sex may be savored as a fillip to friendship. On the other hand, sex will become more prominent as a mode of self-expression and intercommunication in “vital” and “total” dyadic relationships and be increasingly prized in a depersonalized and bureaucratic world as one means of overcoming alienation. In short, I foresee a wide spectrum of sexual experiences ranging from the anonymous and casual to the intimate and enduring.

It may be surmised from the foregoing that sexual morality as such will disappear. Sexual behavior will be governed by the same ethics of ego control, generosity, and concern for the welfare of others that should mark all human dealings. One qualification, however, must be made. The attitudes I have described, which now characterize the vanguard, will no doubt diffuse widely, even into the blue-collar class. It is probable, however, that a large segment of the population will continue to adhere to traditional gender roles and sexual mores, including the double standard of greater permissiveness for men.

Blabbermouths and Clams: Sex Differences in Self-Disclosure in Same-Sex and Cross-Sex Friendship Dyads1

Helen M. Hacker Originally published 1981

Self-disclosure involves the two related dimensions of intimacy and power. It may be rewarding or costly to both confider and confidant. Although previous research has indicated that women are more self-disclosing than men, in the study reported here sex differences in self-disclosure are negligible in same-sex friendships. In cross-sex friendships, however, more men are confiding than women. Further, in female-male dyads men tend to hide their weaknesses and women to conceal their strengths. In such friendships, also, both men and women of working class origin are more prone to self-revelation than middle class respondents. Surprisingly, the correlation between feelings of closeness and self-disclosure is far from perfect in friendly (as opposed to stranger-like) relationships. Research on personal assessments of risks versus rewards in self-disclosure is needed.

Self-disclosure is a form of risk taking in which the potential rewards of sharing intimacy are weighed against the costs of vulnerability to rejection, ridicule, exploitation, or betrayal. Thus, confiding behavior places one in the power of the confidant. Among social equals this potentially unequal power situation is redressed or brought into balance by the norm of reciprocity (Derlega & Chaikin, 1975). We restore the equilibrium of power by returning the confidence. Many social relations, however, are seemingly structured on an imbalance of power, such as social worker-client, priest-confessor, and therapist-patient. As Henley (1973) has said, “Personal information flows opposite to the flow of authority.” This unidirectional flow of information can also represent a tyranny over the authority who is obliged to listen. On occasion the dominant person might like to reverse roles and share personal problems with the subordinate. Listening, as well as confiding, represents a reward to the vouchsafer of information. By listening one puts oneself at the disposal of the talker. Self-disclosure, then, involves the two related dimensions of intimacy and power, but power also has a two-sided character.

Previous research has indicated that women are more self-revealing than men (Cozby, 1973; Gitter & Black, 1976; Jourard & Lasakow, 1958; Lowenthal, Thurner, & Chiraboga & Assocs, 1975; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974; Powers & Bultena, 1976; Cantor 1976; Rosenkaimer, Saperstent, lshizaki & MacBride 1976; Stein 1976). According to Henley (1973), their greater amenability to personal divulgence is symbolic of their submission to men and functions to establish and maintain male dominance. This interpretation views self-disclosure solely as a reward to the listener, since the implicit trust is flattering and ego-inflating. The effect is more pronounced if the target person is led to feel that he has been especially singled out as the recipient of secrets and private thoughts, but the fact that women are generally expected to be more communicative may lessen the value of their confidences in comparison to those given by men. Further, as noted above, who holds the power in situations of one-sided communication cannot always be unequivocally determined.

Supplementing, but not contravening the differential power approach to self-disclosure, is that of gender role socialization that encourages girls to express, and boys to hide, feelings and private thoughts, especially those relating to personal problems, failures, and weaknesses. More leeway is given to boys in regard to talking about their strengths and successes.

In addition to consideration of power and socialization experiences which may or may not be conducive to encountering both the risks and the rewards of self-disclosure, we must also take heed of the factor of homogeneity. Here we call attention not to the content of gender role expectations, but to the fact of sex similarity itself with its implication of some commonality of experience, values, and interests. Many researchers have found that homogeneity plays an important part in friendship choices (Athanasiou & Yoshioka, 1973; Booth & Hess, 1974; Brenton, 1976; Hess 1977). Lazarsfeld and Merton (1954) coined the term “homophily” to refer to the influence of value similarity in promoting interpersonal attachments and fostering the closeness that, despite Simmel’s confessions-to-a-stranger phenomenon, is deemed prerequisite by many investigators for the feelings of trust that reduce the risks of self-disclosure. Indeed studies in this area have shown the degree of self-disclosure to vary directly with the level of friendship (Gitter & Black, 1976; Jourard, 1959; Nelson-Jones & Strong, 1976; Haapenen 1976). Presumably social norms require a close friend rather than an acquaintance as the appropriate recipient of confiding behavior (Luft, 1969). Jourard (1959) has put it: “The amount of personal information that one person is willing to disclose to another appears to be an index to the ‘closeness’ of the relationship, and of the affection, love or trust that prevails between two people.” According to Derlega and Chaikin (1977), “A major function of friendships and love relationships may be to validate one’s self-concept by obtaining the support and understanding of the other person.” A closeted self, of course, cannot be validated.

In summary, predictions concerning the degree and direction of self-disclosure in the three types of friendship dyads—female-female, male-male, and female-male—that constitute the focus of this paper should be based on the interaction among the four causal factors we have discussed:

the power relationship underlying the self-disclosure for both confider and confidant.

the perception of potential rewards by both discloser and disclosee.

the differential socialization of men and women in regard to the amount and content of what is appropriate for their sex to disclose.

the homogeneity or heterogeneity of sex status.

The Three Types of Friendship Dyads

Female-Female

On all four grounds we would expect self-disclosure to be highest in female-female friendships, and especially among married women in so far as marriage may be presumed to reduce their sexual rivalry with other women. First, despite the emergence of “old girl” networks, institutionalized power differentials among women are still only embryonic, and, consequently, the norm of reciprocity should hold sway. Second, they have been trained to value personal relationships and the rewards of intimacy, and to develop empathic skills. Third, the chumship relations of girlhood and adolescence may have provided the positive experiences that induce them to discount the costs of self-disclosure in favor of the benefits received. Fourth, homogeneity of lifestyle facilitates self-disclosure. To the extent that their roles as wives and mothers occupy the dominant portion of their life space, they share many problems. Even at the workplace their segregation in typing pools and women-dominated occupations, or alternatively, their common “token” status in masculine strongholds, may breed a community of interests. And in most instances the complications of the erotic potential are avoided.

Qualifying these considerations are the facts that women as a subordinate status group may not offer as many rewards to each other to serve to buttress self-esteem to the same degree that friendships with men do. Further, women are potential competitors for male favor, and in this regard run the risk of being subject to the leakage of information damaging to the self. Thus, married women might be expected to have closer and more durable friendships with each other, were it not for the possibilities that such friendships would intrude on the marital relationship or be less needed in view of the gratifications supplied by the husband. In fact, according to Booth and Hess (1974), “marriage for both men and women depresses confiding behavior in all of their friendship relations.”

Male-Male

Self-disclosure is expected to be lowest in this type of friendship. Socialization has inculcated the norm of disclosure of feelings as not only weak, but feminine, and therefore disvalued. Male socialization has also served to block men not only from seeking the rewards of intimacy, but perhaps also from even perceiving their needs in this area.

Since men represent the higher status group, and are in a position to mete out greater rewards and punishments than women, rejection from them is more to be feared. Furthermore, men may be perceived as more stringent upholders of masculine norms, and more resistant to changes in male roles than women are. As Lehne (1976) says, “The male role is predominantly maintained by men themselves.”

From the power standpoint there is no reason to suppose unequal patterns of self-disclosure among men, unless there is a disparity in their statuses other than sex. Additionally, the power to withhold confidences, as well as the power to withhold listening, may be viewed, purely in terms of sex status, as equal among men.

Counterbalancing the previous considerations of masculine norms and men’s vulnerability to other men is the fact of sex homogeneity. Men share a universe of discourse with other men, arising in part from a masculine culture of preoccupation with sports, politics, business, cars, sexual conquest, and so forth, and also from a similarity of roles as job-holders and primary breadwinners with attendant repercussions on their husband and father roles. What men hold in common may prove sufficient at least partially to overcome the obstacles posed by cultural proscriptions against undue self-disclosure and lack of skills in enjoying the rewards of intimacy.

Female-Male

In cross-sex friendships the vectors previously discussed are working in opposed directions and the force of each is unknown.

In such dyads the fact that the woman occupies a subordinate power position might imply greater self-disclosure on her part. The man, however, has less to fear from a woman than from another man, at least in a nonsexual relationship, and, consequently, can unburden himself with less constraint. In line with this supposition, middle-aged women ministers have reported considerable success in their pastoral work with men, who feel more comfortable in discussing their personal problems with a woman (Hacker 1950). Male undergraduates, also, have reported greater exchanges of confidences with best female friends than with best male friends (Komarovsky, 1974; Olstad, 1975).

Similarly, because of the continued primacy of the housewife role for women and the dual labor market for the two sexes, most women are not in direct competition with men for achievement of their principal life goals, but rather dependent on them. Further, if the possibility of a long-term romantic or marital interest is excluded, one might suppose that in terms of the power dimension alone women’s self-disclosure would be highest in a cross-sex relationship. Note, however, that this expectation assumes that the more powerful person in the dyad defines such disclosure as a reward rather than as a cost.

Whether a man wishes to take advantage of his dominant position in listening or in talking varies with factors not easily taken into account (Rubin, Hill, Peplau, and Dunkel-Schetter 1980).2 Marital status may constitute one such factor. Balswick and Peek (1971) speculate that men learn to be situationally rather than totally inexpressive and observe an emotional double standard that permits them communication with their wives but not with other women. This observation may be more applicable to white-collar than to blue-collar husbands (Komarovsky, 1967). In explaining their finding of the greater propensity of blue-collar than of white-collar wives to discuss personal difficulties with a male friend, Booth and Hess (1974) adduce both the lesser need and the more stringent marital restraints of white-collar women. If blue-collar wives indeed are able to obtain emotional support from men other than their husbands, it may be hypothesized that in such extramarital friendships they can play a more dominant role.

This type of relationship may be heterogeneous in aspects other than the sex of the participants. The hypergamy in our society extends also to friendship in that the man is likely to be older, better educated, hold a more prestigious job, and have more money than the woman (Booth & Hess, 1974). Such heterogeneity may block the avenue to closeness and consequent ease of self-disclosure provided by a commonality of interests and concerns.

In terms of gender role socialization, prediction is also problematic. True, women may be predisposed to self-disclosure, but they are also trained to please men. Consequently, the amount and kinds of self-disclosure that take place may depend on the needs and wishes of the man. If he wants her to speak, she is willing to comply. If he prefers to talk, she will be a receptive audience or sounding board. From all the foregoing, it may be hypothesized that he will listen only to her problems and failures, but that she will listen both to his problems and his triumphs.

It is with these presuppositions in mind that we approach our study of same-sex and cross-sex friendship dyads.

Sample and Method

Intensive interviews were conducted in the New York metropolitan area and in New Jersey during 1977-78 with both members of the following friendship pairs: 44 female-female dyads, 26 male-male dyads, and 55 cross-sex dyads. Since the interviewers were college students, the sample is disproportionately young, single, Catholic, educated, and white-collar. This paper is based on responses to questions tapping the areas of self-disclosure and closeness.

Self-Disclosure

What do you talk about?

What don’t you talk about?

Do you discuss your feelings about the friend to the friend?

Do you ever lie or intentionally withhold information from the friend?

How much do you trust your friend not to take advantage of your confidences?

Do you feel comfortable in revealing both weaknesses and strengths?

Responses to these questions were coded according to whether they indicated high, low, or moderate self-disclosure. Four of the six questions had to be categorized as either high or low for the individual to be placed at the extremes of the scale. Anything in between was considered moderate.

Closeness or Depth of the Relationship

How dependent are you on this friendship?

How would you feel if the friendship ended?

What circumstances might break it up?

How would you describe your feelings for this friend?

The responses to these questions were coded on a scale from “not close” to “very close.” Three of the four codes for each respondent had to indicate either a high level or a low level of closeness for the individual to be placed in the appropriate category. Anything in between was considered a moderate level of closeness. To test the relationship between closeness and self-disclosure a matrix was constructed employing the two dimensions, and individuals were assigned to the appropriate category on the basis of their scores.

Findings on Self-Disclosure

When individuals in the three types of dyads are ranked according to their degree of self-disclosure, as presented in Table 1, only negligible sex differences in same-sex friendships emerge, but in cross-sex friendships fewer men than women are low disclosers.

We see that 40% of women in comparison to 38% of men are high disclosers, and 60% of both sexes are moderate (Davidson and Duberman in press).3 High self-disclosure, however, drops to 32% for both sexes in cross-sex dyads. It is interesting to note that although no woman is a low self-discloser in a friendship with another woman, 13% of women as compared with 3% of men become such in a cross-sex relationship.

Table 1. Level of Self-Disclosure by Type of Dyad

Same-Sex Dyads

Cross-Sex Dyads

% who are:

Females

Males

Females

Males

High

40

38

32

32

Moderate

60

60

55

64

Low

0

2

13

3

Total

100 (88)

100 (52)

100 (55)

100 (55)

The content of what is disclosed also differs for men and women, as seen in Table 2. Although a higher percentage of men than of women report feeling comfortable in revealing both weaknesses and strengths in both same-sex and cross-sex relationships, it is noteworthy that no male reveals only weaknesses, and no female reveals only strengths. Further, a third of the women say they reveal only weaknesses in friendships with men, whereas almost a third of the men reveal only strengths in friendships with women.

Contrary to the Booth and Hess (1974) finding of diminished self-disclosure of married respondents to persons outside the marital relationship, this study reveals a differential in their favor, as evidenced in Table 3.

From Table 3 we see that 56% of married women, in contrast to 29% of single women, are characterized as high self-disclosers to their female friends, but, more surprisingly, a similar disparity is observed with respect to their self-revelations to male friends, 53% vs. 22%. Thus marriage would appear to facilitate, rather than inhibit, self-disclosing behavior in women, regardless of the sex of the friend.

Table 2. “Do you feel comfortable in revealing both weaknesses and strengths?”

Same-Sex Dyads

Cross-Sex Dyads

% who:

Females

Males

Females

Males

Reveal both

77

86

50

62

Reveal weaknesses

18

0

33

0

Reveal strength

0

9

0

31

Reveal neither

5

5

17

7

Total

100 (88)

100 (52)

100 (55)

100 (55)

Table 3. Level of Self-Disclosure by Marital Status and Type of Dyad

Same-Sex Dyads

Females

Males

% who are:

Married

Not Married

Married

Not Married

High

56

29

45

33

Moderate

44

71

50

67

Low

0

0

5

0

Total

100 (36)

100 (52)

100 (22)

100 (30)

Cross-Sex Dyads

Females

Males

% who are:

Married

Not Married

Married

Not Married

High

53

22

33

32

Moderate

16

67

56

68

Low

31

11

11

0

Total

100 (18)

100 (73)

100 (18)

100 (37)

Since self-disclosure also increased with age for women (see Table 4), some doubt might be cast on marriage as the implicating factor, were it not for the fact that age does not appear to make a difference for men.

Whether in same-sex or cross-sex friendships, the greatest frequency of high self-disclosure is found in women of working class origin. Working class men manifest the lowest percentage of high self-disclosers in friendships with other men, but not in friendships with women, as documented in Table 5.

In contradiction to previous research, high self-disclosure is not always predicated on high closeness. As indicated in Table 6, 22% of women and 27% of men reveal personal concerns to their same-sex friends in the absence of feelings of closeness. A similar pattern obtains in cross-sex friendships, though a greater proportion of men is highly self-disclosing without attendant closeness to their women friends than in the reverse situation.

Table 4. Level of Self-Disclosure by Age and Type of Dyad

Same-Sex Dyads

Females

Males

% who are:

Under 26

26 & over

Under 26

26 & over

High

33

46

39

38

Moderate

67

54

61

59

Low

0

0

0

3

Total

100 (42)

100 (46)

100 (23)

100 (29)

Cross-Sex Dyads

Females

Males

% who are:

Under 26

26 & over

Under 26

26 & over

High

27

38

33

32

Moderate

62

48

67

62

Low

11

14

0

6

Total

100 (26)

100 (29)

100 (24)

100 (31)

Discussion

The findings of this study, although only suggestive in view of the small size and non-representative character of the sample, suggest some revisions of received opinion. Contrary to previous research, men are not substantially more confiding to women than they are to men as the hypothesis of less loss of face might dictate, nor, apparently, do women express their submissiveness to men in terms of unreciprocated revelations. As mentioned earlier, divulgence does not always signify an abrogation of power nor is it necessarily a reward to the recipient. Listening may represent a burden that men are less willing to bear than women. Alternatively, men may feel less social distance towards women than women towards men.

Table 5. Level of Self-Disclosure by Social Class and Type of Dyad

Same-Sex Dyads

Females

Males

% who are:

Working Class

Lower Middle Class

Upper Middle Class

Working Class

Lower Middle Class

Upper Middle Class

(23)

(37)

(28)

(17)

(18)

(17)

High

48

37

36

29

44

41

Moderate

52

63

64

71

56

53

Low

0

0

0

0

0

6

Total

100

100

100

100

100

100

Cross-Sex Dyads

Females

Males

% who are:

Working Class

Lower Middle Class

Upper Middle Class

Working Class

Lower Middle Class

Upper Middle Class

(14)

(23)

(10)

(16)

(23)

(16)

High

50

13

44

31

29

27

Moderate

43

61

56

56

61

73

Low

7

26

0

13

0

0

Total

100

100

100

100

100

100

Table 6. Level of Self-Disclosure by Level of Closeness and Type of Dyad

Same-Sex Dyads

Cross-Sex Dyads

% who:

Females

Males

Females

Males

Highly self-disclosing, very close

18

11

6

6

Highly self-disclosing, not very close

22

27

17

22

Not highly self-disclosing, very close

14

4

0

4

Not highly self-disclosing, not very close

43

58

77

70

Total

100(88)

100(52)

100(55)

100(54)

Examination of the content of what is disclosed helps to illuminate the sex difference. Men’s predilection for revealing only strengths and women’s candor concerning weaknesses in cross-sex friendships suggest that both sexes feel more constrained to fulfill gender role expectations in their relationships with the other sex.4 The compulsion to maintain this kind of facade may bespeak a lesser intimacy in cross-sex friendships, as indicated also by the lower percentage of both men and women who reveal both strengths and weaknesses. Such lack of closeness might be attributed either to social norms regulating the relationship between men and women friends or to the greater heterogeneity in this type of dyad. A test of homogeneity occupation, and social class had the result of categorizing 23% of both types of same-sex dyads as being highly homogeneous, in contrast to 16% of the cross-sex dyads. The greatest disparities found were in age and occupation. However, it should be recalled that there is no appreciable difference in closeness between male-male and cross-sex dyads—15% and 13%, respectively, were rated as “very close.” (For female-female dyads the percentage is 32.) Putting these two findings together, we conclude that neither the heterogeneity of cross-sex dyads nor special definitions of appropriate behavior between men and women is responsible, but rather the fact that the dyad contains a man. In accordance with previous research we conclude that women, apparently, have a greater capacity for intimacy and self-disclosure.

This conclusion is further supported by the fact of the substantially similar confiding behavior of men and women in cross-sex dyads that would seem to exclude the possible operation of a power differential. More likely, gratifications other than mutual self-disclosure are sought in such relationships. Many respondents mentioned a desire to obtain a perspective on their current love interest from a non-involved person of the opposite sex, as well as to expand their viewpoint in general. Another frequently cited advantage was the opportunity for an escort or date without sexual hassle or need for commitment.

We hypothesized earlier that self-disclosure would be highest among married women on the grounds that any threat posed by other women is removed by marriage and that the marital state breeds a similarity of life styles. On the other hand, room was made for the possibility that the marital relationship itself might satisfy a great part of the need for intimacy, as indicated in the frequently heard comment that “my spouse is my best friend.”

The findings supported the former expectation of enhanced self-disclosure on the part of married women. One might speculate that having attained the goal of marriage, women feel more relaxed with both sexes—less competitive with other women and less needful for making a favorable impression on men. (In the case of men marriage makes less of a difference.) Perhaps problems requiring discharge to a sympathetic ear accumulate more for women in the marital state than for men. Before assigning this catalytic power to marriage, however, we encountered the uncomfortable suspicion that marriage might be a spurious variable masking the influence of age, as in Zeisel’s famous example that unmarried persons eat more candy than the married do (1968). The sample was too small to introduce marital status and age as simultaneous variables, but the effects of age alone were investigated and found to be discriminatory for women but not for men. Although the question of whether age or marital status accounts for more of the variance in female self-disclosure cannot be answered definitively with the data at hand, this sex difference suggests marriage as the more relevant factor. This notion is further supported by class differences in the confiding behavior of married women, as reported by Booth and Hess (1974), and corroborated in the present study.

Assignment of social class in Table 5 was made on the basis of responses to the question, “In what social class would you place your family during the period you were growing up? Working class, lower middle class, or upper middle class.” Consequently, it is indicative only of probable socialization experiences and limited by a subjective definition of social class. Still it is suggestive that women of working class origin are more likely than either lower or upper middle class women to be high self-disclosers in both same-sex and cross-sex friendships, while men from working class backgrounds are less likely only in friendships with other men. We may hazard the possibility that working class men, as much as their wives, suffer from their self-imposed restraint vis-a-vis their wives. In fact, as Booth and Hess (1974) suggest, they may feel themselves to be in a double bind. The very wife who ostensibly craves more communication of personal feelings from her husband may be suspected of finding him unmanly if he satisfied her desire. Middle class men, on the other hand, may be more prone to establish intimacy with their wives, and have less need of feminine nurturance outside of marriage.

The lowest cross-sex disclosure is found in lower middle class women. Such women may be more subject to traditional norms that place restrictions upon the topics of communication between the sexes and legitimate jealousy on the part of significant others.

Perhaps the most surprising finding of this study is the far from perfect correlation between feelings of closeness and self-disclosure in friendly (as opposed to stranger-like) relationships. The fact that self-disclosure is not a concomitant of closeness in a relationship for more than a fifth of the respondents challenges interpretation. Presumably other factors that mitigate the risks of self-disclosure are at work. On the reward side these might be related to intensity of the need for self-revelation, on the cost side, relative indifference to the reaction of the friend. Similarly, we see that high feelings of closeness do not always bring high self-disclosure in their wake. Further study is needed to clarify the relationship between closeness and self-disclosure.

In summary, it is evident that the predictions made at the outset on the basis of the factors of power, perception of rewards, gender role socialization, and homogeneity are largely borne out by the data, with the important exception that friendships between women are not marked by greater self-disclosure than those between men. Self-disclosure, however, is greater in same-sex than in cross-sex dyads, and men and women differ chiefly in which aspects of the self they choose to reveal.

Notes

1 I gratefully acknowledge the invaluable contributions of Kathleen Maurer Smith who not only conducted six of the interviews, but, more importantly, constructed the indices of self-disclosure, homogeneity, and closeness, coded the interviews, provided the data for the tables, and supplied many of the bibliographical items, as part of her Master’s essay “Variations in Homogeneity, Self-Disclosure and Closeness in Same-Sex and Cross-Sex Friendship Dyads” for which I served as major adviser. Her unit of analysis, however, was the dyad rather than the individual. I wish also to thank Beth G. Hess for her helpful suggestions in revising the questionnaire, establishing the coding structure, and, above all, enlisting the aid of student interviewers at the County College of Morris in New Jersey.

2 Rubin and associates link women’s greater self-disclosure to gender-role socialization rather than to power differentials.

3 Davidson and Duberman, utilizing a comparable sample, obtained similar results.

4 An alternative explanation is that men experience greater subjective awareness of strengths than women do. The question of sex differences in self-esteem for this sample is explored in an as-yet unpublished paper available from the author titled, “The influence of gender roles on reciprocal ratings in same-sex and cross-sex friendship dyads.”

References

Athanasiou, R., & G. A. Yashioka. 1973. “The Spatial Character of Friendship Formation.” Environment and Behavior 5: 43-65.

Balswick, J., & C. Peek. 1971. “The Inexpressive Male; A Tragedy of American Society.” Family Coordinator 20: 363-368.

Booth, A., & E. Hess. 1974. “Cross-Sex Friendship.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 36: 38-46.

Brenton, M. 1976. Friendship. New York: Stein and Day.

Cantor, M. 1976. “The configuration and intensity of the informal support system in a New York City elderly population.” Invited paper for the Gerontology Society Annual Meeting, New York City.

Cozby, P. C. 1973. “Self-Disclosure: A Literature Review.” Psychological Bulletin 73: 73-91.

Davidson, Lynne R. and L. Duberman. In Press. “Friendship: A comparison of same-sex dyads.” Sex Roles.

Derlega, V. J., & A. L. Chaikin. 1975. Sharing Intimacy: What We Reveal to Others and Why. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Derlega, V. J., & A. L. Chaikin. 1977. “Privacy and Self-Disclosure in Social Relationships.” Journal of Social Issues 33(3): 102-115.

Gitter, G. & H. Black. 1976. “Is self-disclosure self-revealing?” Journal of Counseling Psychology 23: 327-332.

Haapenen, R.A. 1976. Close friendship: The individualistic community. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of California, Davis.

Hacker, H. 1950. “Petticoats in the pulpit.” Unpublished paper.

Hess, B. B. 1977. “Sex roles, life course and friendship.” Paper for the Western College Alumnae Association, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.

Jourard, S. M., & P. Lasakow. 1958. “Some factors in self-disclosure.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 56: 91-98.

Jourard, S. M. 1959. “Self-disclosure and other cathexis.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 59: 428-431.

Jourard, S. M. 1971. The transparent self (3rd ed.). New York: D. Van Nostrand Co..

Komarovsky, M. 1967. Blue-collar marriage. New York: Vintage Boos (Random House).

Komarovsky, M. 1974. “Patterns of self-disclosure of male undergraduates.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 36: 677-686.

Lazarsfeld, P., & R. K. Merton. 1976. “Friendship as a social process: A substantive and methodical analysis.” In The forty-nine percent majority: The male sex role, edited by M. Berger, T. Abel, & C. H. Page. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Lowenthal, M. F., M. Thurner, D. Chiriboga & Assocs. 1975. Four stages of life. San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.

Luft, J. 1969. Of human interaction. Palo Alto, CA: National Press Books.

Maccoby, E. E., & C. N. Jacklin. 1974. The psychology of sex differences. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Nelson-Jones, R., & S. R. Strong. 1976. “Rules, risk and self-disclosure.” British Journal of Guidance and Counseling 4: 202-211.

Olstad, K. 1975. “Brave new men: A basis for discussion.” In Sex: Male, Gender: Masculine, edited by J. W. Petras. Port Washington, NY: Alfred Publishing Co., Inc..

Powers, E. A., & G. L. Bultena. 1976. “Sex differences in intimate friendships of old age.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 38: 739-474.

Rosenkaimer, D., A. Saperstent, B. Ishizaki, & S. M. MacBride. 1976. Coping with age-sex differences. Paper presented at the Gerontological Society Annual Meeting, New York City.

Rubin, Z., C. T. Hill, L. A. Peplau & C. Dunkel-Schetter. 1980. “Self-disclosure in dating couples: Sex roles and the ethics of openness.” Journal of Marriage & the Family 42: 305-317.

Stein, P. 1976. On same-sex and cross-sex friendships. Paper presented at the National Council on Family Relations Annual Meeting, New York City.

Zeisel, H. 1968. Say it with figures (5th ed., rev.). New York: Harper & Row.

IV. Women of All Types and Locations

That was such a happy year, my first year at the University of Minnesota, because I was a big shot on campus, the debating society, and I was elected to be some kind of student representative. [A professor] wrote on one of my exam papers “keep up the good work freshy,” because I entered a course that was supposed to be open only to upperclassmen... I was very interested in logic; I always felt that I was so good at picking out fallacies and errors in reasoning.

Throughout her career, Hacker used her self-proclaimed skills in logic to avoid errors in reasoning that were common to the discipline at the time. In her early scholarship, she offered multiple critiques of research that overgeneralized from the experience of men to women, or from particular groups of women to all women. In her own work, she paid attention to how the racial and economic background of women shapes their experiences and opportunities, and built arguments from cross-cultural comparisons of women in a wide array of international contexts. In both her domestic and global focus, Hacker demonstrates an early appreciation of the importance of an intersectional approach to research—an argument that did not truly enter the discipline’s consciousness until Kimberlé Crenshaw and Patricia Hill Collins fully theorized the multiple intersecting sources of oppression.

“Women of All Types and Locations” brings together Hacker’s writing on variation in gender norms across race, culture, and religion. Although more commonplace today, these forward-thinking articles complicate factors that shape group and individual experiences and call for a more nuanced approach to theorizing power and society.

In the first entry of this section, “Bases of Individuation in the Modern World,” we see Hacker working through the challenges of retaining group identity in a society that emphasizes equality at the level of the individual. Here she raises difficult questions about what is lost and what is gained “once distinctions of race, nationality, and sex have been broken down.” And while the vision of a society in which individuals are not born into group difference still seems far beyond the horizon, academia and the larger society continue to grapple with fundamental questions about identity, sub-culture, and the weakening of group ties.

Next, we include “Gender Roles from a Cross-Cultural Perspective,” a chapter Hacker wrote for Lucile Duberman’s 1975 edited volume, Gender and Sex in Society. Here Hacker takes a global approach, comparing the paths taken by Israel, China, Sweden, and the USSR to foster gender equality. In examining how each country effectively failed to achieve the goal, she masterfully illustrates the importance of giving attention to both structural and cultural barriers. Hacker stays true to her social action-oriented approach by concluding with a list of material and ideological pre-conditions that must be met before true equality can be achieved.

“Sex Roles in Black Society: Caste Versus Caste” is an early draft of a section of Hacker’s second book chapter, “Class and Race Differences in Gender Roles,” included in Duberman’s (1975) aforementioned collection. The short essay is one of the clearest examples of Hacker’s early writing on the intersectional nature of inequality. She argues that any movement—whether a Marxist uprising or Black Power—that is based on one source of inequality will always fall short in achieving true justice. Instead, social action must take into account all power differentials: “we may ask whether Black women suffer more from racism or sexism, and whether Black men must be sexists in order to carry on the Black struggle.” While Hacker falls short of the nuance of later intersectional analyses, she clearly argues that to appreciate power and oppression to “these two castes of sex and race a third status should be added—that of class.”

In “The Women’s Movement: Report from Nairobi,” Hacker and Audrey Meyer recount their participation in Forum ’85, the unofficial meetings preceding the UN Conference marking the end of the International Decade for Women. A shortened and revised version of this manuscript was subsequently published in Network News, the newsletter of Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS). Hacker was instrumental in building scholar-activist relationships between her New York chapter of SWS and the UN (for more history this relationship, see Daniela Jauk’s 2017 article in Brock Education Journal). The Forum attracted 13,000 participants and dealt with issues ranging from domestic abuse to the inequitable distribution of resources to the challenge of coming to a consensus on how to define “women’s issues.” While the popularity and visibility of Forum ’85 showed that the women’s movement was “far from spent,” Hacker argued that continued progress required an international commitment that would “bypass old ideological cleavages and permit women to ‘think globally and act locally.’”

Hacker’s report from Nairobi effectively demonstrates her commitment to improving conditions for women from all economic, religious, and geographic backgrounds, her constantly active sociological imagination that always connected domestic issues to the larger political economy, and her delight in experiencing new cultures and ways of seeing the world. In her nineties, she still remembered her trip fondly, telling us that it “was the only time I was in Africa, but I recall one of my happy memories is in this treehouse we were staying and looking out and seeing the elephants coming and drinking the water.”

Lastly, Hacker’s “Women and Religion in Islam” outlines and assesses different courses of potential action for feminist Muslim women seeking equality. As a concluding work for this section, this unpublished essay showcases her research on international groups relegated to the margins by the larger discipline. Once again, we see Hacker rejecting a one-size-fits-all approach to feminism or social action. Instead, she helps reveal the power dynamics in play through attention to the intersection of geographic location, gender, and religious faith.

Section Contents:

Helen M. Hacker. 1955. “Bases of Individuation in the Modern World.” Phylon First Quarter: 33-40.

Helen M. Hacker. 1975. “Gender Roles From a Cross-Cultural Perspective.” Pp. 185-214 in Gender and Sex in Society, edited by Lucile Duberman. New York: Praeger.

Helen M. Hacker. “Sex Roles in Black Society: Caste Versus Caste.” Previously Unpublished.

Helen M. Hacker and Audrey Meyer. “The Women’s Movement: Report from Nairobi.” Previously Unpublished.

Helen M. Hacker. “Women and Religion in Islam.” Previously Unpublished.

References

Jauk, Daniela. 2017. “Feminist Scholar-Activism Goes Global: Experiences of ‘Sociologists for Women in Society’ at the UN.” Brock Education Journal 27(1): 79-100.

Bases of Individuation in the Modern World

Helen M. Hacker Originally published 1955

Many observers of current social trends believe that the world, despite conflicts of power interests, is moving toward a cultural uniformity which they view as destructive of individual values and productive of dull mediocrity. Terms such as “mass society,” “popular culture,” and “good-think” reflect this aversion to standardization. Yet other elements in the value system to which these observers subscribe may lead in their implementation to the tendencies deplored; this essay examines some of the historical and ethical aspects of the problem of individuality in the modern world.

I.

Modern individualism arose from the disintegration of the old ascribed status groups of blood and soil. In the continuing momentum of the Industrial Revolution, personalities formed in provincial cultures were swept away from ancestral attachments and set down in factory and office cheek-by-jowl with other personalities nourished in different but equally provincial cultures. It created jobs—created new and disestablished the old, thus breaking the occupational inheritance of father and son. Production became organized on a social and relationship basis. No longer was the family the productive unit, but the individual. But the individual did not stand alone, since his labor counted for nothing unless it was dovetailed into the work of countless other individuals in the factory division of labor. Thus, the capitalistic mode of production has a contradictory effect on the emergence of individualism. On the one hand, the employer, if he be truly rational, is interested in only those attributes of the worker which are relevant to the job he performs. Race, name, creed, or previous condition are discounted in favor of skill. And an industrial society committed to ever greater efficiency and the raising of productive levels must seek to widen the arena of effective competition. When consideration of ascribed status—family, national origin, religion, race, or sex—prevent broad groups from acquiring skills, talent is wasted and industrial efficiency limited; therefore, one strong drive present in the economic organization of industrial capitalism is toward the elimination of all minority groups.

On the other hand, there is the tendency for achieved statuses to become infused with elements of ascribed status. Occupations like plumber, stenographer, lawyer, physician, and draftsman summon up group stereotypes. The income tax return of a lawyer may be more carefully checked than that of a teacher. A clergyman may be offered a soft drink instead of a cocktail. An applicant for a job at an airplane factory may be turned down if his I.Q. is too high. Thus, personality traits are ascribed and personality development limited on the bases of achieved as well as ascribed statuses. And in the modern factory, the reverse side of the coin of neglecting the ascribed attributes of race, religion, nationality, etc., is to consider the worker only in his functional capacity, thus denying his individuality. The employer thinks in terms of the drafting gang, the section crew, and the various departments.

Although, from the point of view of the individual, being born into an ascribed status group may place brakes on his personal development, from the point of view of the larger society the presence of many subcultures, each contributing its own distinctive personality type, leads to a rich patterning of the social fabric when these distinctive personalities interact in later life. The question may therefore be raised whether the disappearance of minority groups as the breeding grounds of their unique personality types may not result in the diminution of individual differences in the larger society and the impoverishment of social life.

It is in this light that current efforts of minority group leaders to preserve their group and its way of life may be viewed. To the sociologist impressed with the levelling tendency of technological and social changes through which “folk cultures are being increasingly drawn into the vortex of world civilization” the attempts of “nationalist” leaders to resist assimilation seem futile in the long perspective. Yet must all traditional group differences be lost? The conflicts about assimilation versus cultural pluralism center around which cultural differences serve as barriers to economic, political, educational and, sometimes, social opportunities. Education for the acceptance of differences may not keep pace with the individual's desire to belong to a “higher” social group. Furthermore, the culture traits and complexes developed in a peasant, village, or household economy either lose or change their function in an industrial, secular, mobile, and heterogeneous environment. The fete for a saint in New York does not hold the same meaning for its participants as it did in the Sicilian village. The Indians who don war paint and feathers to enact a dance drive back and forth in “tin lizzies.” The first generation may cling to orthodoxy; the second enters the half-way house of compromise, adaptation, and re-interpretation; the third, unless external pressure dictates a defensive retreat, has lost all traces of “folk” consciousness. In the face, or perhaps teeth, of all the Americanizing or standardizing influences of work, recreation, and information, artificial respiration is required to keep the folk or national culture alive. The drift away is relentless. Even if minority group leaders were disposed to exact sacrifices from their members—and for the most part they protest any disfranchisement from the larger society on the grounds of minority group affiliation—they become less able to do so.

Apart from the desire of some minority group members to preserve group values which they consider precious, what reasons are there for regretting the passing of minority groups? As stated above, many observers feel that the dissolution of “national” and religious groups, with their distinctive child-rearing patterns, will destroy the matrix of individuality and individual differences. In support of this contention, they may say that the existence of many differentiated groups provides the opportunity for the person to participate in more than one culture. Participation in two groups of divergent values supplies a basis for objectivity, forces the revaluation of values, and raises the level of consciousness. In the words of Robert E. Park, progress takes place in the mind of the marginal man. For some the participation may be vicarious; they take the roles of others through the medium of books, and in this sense the intellectual and the artist are marginal men.

It may be true that some alienation (or freedom), some detachment is a prerequisite to great accomplishment. Silence, exile, and cunning constituted Joyce’s recipe for the writer. A stranger and afraid in a world one never made underlies many a work of genius. This is not to argue that the artist must be a neurotic, but in some way he must transcend ordinary experiences. Thorstein Veblen, himself a marginal man, provided an illustration of this point. Because Veblen had always expressed great praise for Jews, a Zionist magazine asked him to contribute a piece on the Jewish renaissance-to-be in Palestine. But the magazine did not print Veblen’s article. He said that although in America Jews had contributed to art, science, and literature, in the Jewish homeland they would become a nation of happy farmers and mediocrities.

II.

In the interests of what values are like-mindedness, Gleichsaltung, kitsch, der Massemensch terms of opprobrium? Are plaids preferable to black or white or grey? Several arguments may be adduced in favor of individual differences.

The cake of custom flattens without the leavening effect of deviant personalities. Innovators are recruited from the ranks of the uncomfortable, and fructifying cultural exchange cannot take place when all trade in the same wares.

Conversely, the existence of many acceptable patterns of life holds the promise of affording congenial roles to larger numbers of the population. Both Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead have written movingly of the plight of the deviant in societies which hold strictly to one ideal personality type. The aggressive, enterprising man is hanged as a witch in Zuni; the trusting individual is a fool in Dobu; the humble, noncompetitive nobleman is an anomaly among the Kwakiutl. Such persons are bereft of human nature in their societies, but more complicated problems arise when the culture prescribes ideal personalities according to the ascribed statuses of sex, occupation or family. Violent, possessive, passionate persons, both men and women, were unadjusted among the Arapesh and normal to the Mundugumor, but only men of this description would be abnormal among the Tchambuli, where sex roles are differentiated in the opposite direction from the Western world. In our own society the businessman who is more absorbed in chess moves than in the moves of his competitors is not carrying out his status personality. The possibilities of finding a congenial role and status in a culture depends, in Linton’s phrase, upon the number of alternatives presented. Such possibilities are severely limited in a society of many universals and few alternatives. Amitoa who fought against the traditional role of Arapesh women would have been happy with the Mundugumor; whereas Kwenda, the Mundugumor woman who loved children, would have been successful as an Arapesh. The homosexual in our society is regarded as neurotic or criminal but could be a useful citizen in Zuni; those who do not seek something “worthwhile” (an American word for money) become either hoboes who are thought vicious or artists who are silly. Cultures limit the personal expression of participants by either not supplying a sufficient number of alternatives or by denying some statuses to categorical groups of people.

Communication and understanding which depend on a certain degree of like-mindedness are also highly valued as prerequisite to a well-functioning social order. The problem arises as to what degree and kind of differences can be tolerated without impairing a sense of community in a society nor threatening the values which it posits as universal. In his Ideology and Utopia Karl Mannheim has called attention to the “talking past one another” characteristic of contemporary thinkers who vainly shout over the walls of their respective universes of discourse, and has expressed the hope for a universal perspective which shall embrace all particular perspectives. The problem is to establish that minimal body of shared values which can bring unity into diversity.

From the individual’s point of view, we must agree on the differences which will not serve as barriers to the kinds of participation on which we also agree must be afforded to everyone. For example, should the wearing of a beret symbolize unfitness for college teaching? Should the desire to observe Saturday as the Sabbath bar one from unemployment benefits? Should treason to the United States prevent one from receiving a poetry prize? Food habits, details of dress, tastes in music, art or home furnishings, and religious ceremonials are areas in which many feel tolerant. But one is tolerant only about the things which do not matter very much. The hero in Green Mansions put meat-eaters beyond the pale of humanity. The high school girl whose mother enforces cotton stockings suffers untold agonies. The music critic often feels that a sour note justifies mayhem. The practitioners of what to some appears to be a harmless religious rite are regarded by others as fearful idolaters. Indeed, consensus is difficult to reach on this problem.

The question of permissible participation may also be viewed in its converse; to wit, how much individually willed non-participation can be tolerated? How much of the individual’s leisure time can society leave unorganized? How much time may we have for dreams, fantasy, and quiet meditation? What should be the proportions between responding to external and internal stimuli? Should there be a telescreen directing every thought and action? Must one always prepare a face to meet the faces one meets? Must one join spontaneous demonstrations, view parades, listen to elder statesmen, read the daily papers, vote in elections, federal, state and municipal, function in organizations devoted to worthy and practical causes? What rights of apathy may be respected? What degree of vigilance should be the price of liberty? How much social responsibility is required before one can cultivate one’s own garden with an unburdened conscience? Is a minimum amount of constant activity sufficient, or are violent swings of intensive participation and isolation preferable? What are the correct proportions between knowing and doing? These questions partake of the age-old problem of the proper relationship between the individual and the group.

How much sacrifice of certain opportunities is it fair to ask an individual to make as the price of his deviant values? Should the unappreciated artist starve in his garret or does the world owe him a living even if he refuses “socially useful” work? Or more precisely, who has the right to be an artist—those whose works sell, those judged competent by their colleagues, those approved by government officials? Should professional opportunities be curtailed because of unorthodox opinions? Are name, dress, color, or creed ever relevant to certain kinds of social participation? What degree of martyrdom or isolation must a self-respecting person be prepared to accept in defense of his non-conformity? The above is only suggestive of the unresolved questions in the problem of reconciling social cohesion with individual differentiation.

III.

If we may grant the desirability of individual differences (although mindful of the dangers to social solidarity), what bases for them can be found in modern life, once distinctions of race, nationality, and sex have been broken down?

Every man is like all other men in certain respects; is like some other men in other respects; and is like no other man in some respects. That is, some determinants are universal; some are shared by some; and some are not shared at all. Here we are not concerned with such determinants as upright posture, three-dimensional and color vision, speech apparatus, and the uniquely human repertory of responses which are universal to all men, but with the shared-with-some and unique determinants. These latter may be found even at the biological level. Although brothers and sisters share the same gene pool, no individual, with the possible exception of identical twins, has a gene structure exactly like any other.

It is also necessary to consider biological universals as productive of individual differences. Psychologists are swinging to the view that there are certain irrefragable elements of human nature which elude central conditioning. Gardner Murphy has said that to hold to extreme cultural relativity is almost as grievous an error as to assert a constant human nature. It is customary for conservatives to stress the biological immutability of man’s nature and for progressives to emphasize the social plasticity of his character structure. Freudian revisionists like Homey and Fromm have practically emptied man of instinct and reduced the Id to a translucent thing. Then where can they find the wellspring of the spontaneity and freedom they celebrate? Ironically enough, today it becomes radical to hold to the primacy of instinctual gratification, that there are cultural molds into which human protoplasm will not fit, that outraged instincts will protest. In George Orwell’s 1984 the hero, Winston Smith, wishes desperately to believe that the power to transform the totalitarian society, which has carried the mortification of the flesh and the mortification of the spirit to a marvelous degree, lies in the “proles” who are left free to live out animal existences. Can their “orgastic potency” make a revolution? Wilhelm Reich believes that sex repression is the first and most fundamental repression—political quiescence, fear of irrational authority, mental intimidation, are all predicated upon it. Orgastically potent people, he says, will not tolerate authority nor meaningless work, but will instinctually create new forms. The Grand Inquisitor, O’Brien, disabuses Winston of this hope, and indeed the dynamics of revolution may be more readily located in conflicts between institutions than in a tension between biology and institutions. The relevance of imputing universal conative forces to man is that they form a counterpoise to cultural shaping, and the vicissitudes in their development result in individual differences of personality. The testimony of Malinowski, Mead, Benedict, Kardiner, etc., indicate that the homogeneity of personality attributed to preliterate groups by older anthropologists was greatly exaggerated and that institutional thralldom did not mark every person. Linton has said that skeptics are to be found in even the most “sacred” of societies and that swings from institutional norms may be very wide indeed. While accidents of personal upbringing undoubtedly contribute to aberrancy, the point still remains that the human material is not infinitely malleable. As George Herbert Mead put it, the “biological I” forever escapes the socialized “me."

Only the most brief consideration can be given to “idiosyncratic” determinants of personality. The biological components have already been discussed in a general way. Peculiarities of stature, physiognomy, or glandular makeup (and their social evaluation) would be included here. Then there are physical “accidents,” such as being hit by lightning, or suffering frostbite, and social “accidents,” such as the death of a parent, being adopted, or meeting particular people who serve as “influences.” (Casual social contacts not foreordained by the cultural pattern of social interrelations may be crucial.) Also to be mentioned is the position of the child in the family. Of course, the effects of “accidents” upon the individual and upon the behavior of others toward him are influenced by culture. For example, among the Mundugumor only those born with the umbilical cord around the neck can become first-rate artists, and in our culture being born with a caul indicates genius. Kardiner accounts for deviations from the basic personality structure among the Alorese in terms of family accidents.

We turn now to the group differentiations which Kluckhohn has termed role determinants. First to be noted here is the influence of caste, which we have already posited as being in the process of disintegration, at least with respect to national, racial, and religious groups and possibly even age and sex. Culturally differentiated sex roles are too familiar to require more than one example. Housekeeping and baby-tending are largely female tasks in America and male responsibilities among the Marquesans. Passing to age, growing old is a problem in the United States, but not in Australia. The discontinuities in cultural conditioning to which Benedict has called attention were prominent among the Comanche (Linton). In middle years a man was called upon to be a warrior, vigorous, self-reliant, and pushing. Ignoring slights was a sign of weakness. But an old man was expected to be wise and gentle, to give advice and settle feuds, and to overlook abuse. The transition was so difficult that many warriors preferred to be killed in action. Sometimes old men became malevolent and resorted to magic to compensate for bodily weakness. Age is so potent a factor in social expectations in the United States that one hardly knows where to begin. Recent sociological studies show that, in general, middle-class children are expected by their parents to assume responsibility earlier than lower-class children are expected to assume similar responsibilities by their parents. It is likely that middle-class children suffer more frustration of their impulses, and become, at an earlier age, orderly, conscientious, responsible, and tame persons. (This discussion, of course, overlaps the influence of class, which will be mentioned below.) Primitive children, too, are given responsibility and made to look after themselves at an earlier age, but here too there are cultural differences. The Manus people stress physical proficiency, but not social discipline. The Samoans condemn precocity, except in dances. Adolescent Sturm und Drang are unknown to the Samoans, but expected in Western societies. The problem of adolescence as a distinct age category is met in different ways. Some societies elect to prolong childhood into the teens; others push the adolescent into premature adulthood. In our complex society, says Klineberg, there is no fixed age at which certain privileges are automatically obtained—no rites de passage—and for a number of years an adolescent must fight for his independence. For example, when may a boy have a house key or take the family car; when may a girl go out unchaperoned? Kurt Lewin has likened the adolescent to a marginal man, uncertain of his status, desiring the privileges of adulthood and abjuring the obligations of childhood, unhappy in his previous age group and not fully accepted as a member of an older age group. Other aspects of the age factor can only be alluded to. Both Parsons and Lynd have stressed the accent on youth in our “youthful” country. Most Americans agree with Bernard Shaw that childhood is too precious to be wasted on children. Margaret Mead has shown how mothers compete with their adolescent daughters—a favorite theme in the movies. Preserving the appearance and attributes of youth is more important for women than for men. Many are reluctant to exchange the “glamour” for the “domestic” pattern. Despite the idealization of the youth culture by adults there is also emphasis upon achieving the responsibilities of adulthood. Particularly in the male, the “boy” or the “perennial adolescent” is in disfavor. Following the period of experimentation or wild oats or Wanderjahren (depending on the subgroup culture), the man is expected to achieve a home and a calling. In Plainville a young married couple was expected to “settle down,” rent or purchase a farm, and to raise a family. In middle-class circles it is not sufficient to be a gentleman and a scholar, an all-round humanist; one must have a specialty, a definite occupation with well-marked rungs to “success.” Old age calls for new personality patterns. In comparison with other societies, the United States isolates old people from participation in the most important social structures and interests. Largely responsible for this situation are the conjugal family, which limits the household to husband and wife and their dependent children, and our occupational structure which makes little provision for gradual retirement. One either holds a job or one does not. In Plainville retirement from social importance begins when the children are grown up. Oldsters are disregarded for the most part, but tolerated if they do not complain about their pains and aches. Gossip and whittling form their major activities. This discussion has been concerned with personality differentiation arising from cultural expectations of social roles for different age groups. But independent of culture, age acts directly on personality, though there is no clear-cut evidence as to the exact nature, timing, and influence of the physiological changes associated with changing age. Yet with reference to our problem of retaining individual differences in the wake of the passing of minority groups, age is seen to be a differentiating factor.

What other possibilities are there besides sex and age? Class comes immediately to mind. Social classes have distinctive cultures and produce distinctive personalities. Personality differentiation on a class basis derives not only from the divergent values and behavior patterns of the various classes, but also from their differential access to material goods. Although one may hope that differences in income will progressively diminish, a “classless” society in the sense of equality of prestige (and perhaps even power) seems to most culture-bound sociologists (including the writer) barely a theoretical possibility. The criteria of class membership may shift, but the factor of class would appear to be the most potent and long-run determinant of personality differentiation.

Our inquiry is primarily centered on the question of whether new group formations will yield as complex and differentiated a world as the national cultures of the past. Are the differences engendered by participation in these cultural-interest groups as rich in character as those stemming from national groups? On the negative side of this question the following points must be entered. Participation in these groups is largely voluntary and occurs later in life. Their influence, therefore, is not so irremediable and pervasive as the primary groups of family and neighborhood which delimit the child’s world. Then, too, the feeling of belongingness to clique and special interest groups is less intense than to groups into which one is born. Since there is less ego-involvement, there is less ego-modification. Also, overlapping group memberships weaken the influence of any one. Most people strive to integrate their personalities, and this is typically accomplished either by hierarchizing values, i.e., arranging group values in their order of importance, or by segmentalizing values, i.e., changing value-observance to fit the group in which one is currently acting. The latter solution of water-tight compartments is difficult to maintain, since the attributes of one role come in time to affect the “core” personality. Thus, returned servicemen sometimes found themselves using barracks language in polite drawing rooms. The sociological truism that a person has as many personalities as the groups in which he participates must be modified to allow for a dominant role.

(It may be objected that the family as the chief primary group and cultural transmitter will continue to exist, but the question then becomes: what will be the bases of family differences?) Suggestive here is the family typology given in James Bossard’s Family Situations.

If it is decided that cultural-interest groups provide an inadequate basis for individuation, are we then justified in perpetuating ascribed statuses? This is a question of aesthetic versus ethical values. The aesthetic view of life admits of inequality, suffering, and limitation in the interests of a total pattern. Like science, its lexicon does not include the words of “good” and “evil.” The artist may joy in a pair of gnarled hands, but does their possessor? Charming stories may be written of the lives of cocottes in Paris, but are they sufficient warrant for their uncharming lives? Nietzsche is the classical exponent of suffering for art’s sake. In his essay on “The Greek State” he says:

Therefore we may compare this grand Culture with a bloodstained victor, who in his triumphal procession carries the defeated along as slaves chained to his chariot, slaves whom a beneficent power has so blinded that, almost crushed by the wheels of the chariot, they nevertheless still exclaim: “Dignity of labor! Dignity of Man!”

He holds that in order to provide a broad, deep, and fruitful soil for the development of art, the enormous majority must, in the service of a minority, be slavishly subjected to life’s struggle to a greater degree than their own wants necessitate. And art is required to redeem life. In his beautiful essay, “The Birth of Tragedy,” Nietzsche speaks of the Apollonian concept which permits the spectator to transform the world of actuality in all its tragic horror into a world of appearance which he may view with god-like delight as an aesthetic phenomenon. But is the whisper of art sufficiently seductive to drown the call of justice? Here one may only allude to the old strife between Hebraism and Hellenism.

Ethics speaks for complete equality of opportunity, including freedom of knowledge. No one must be allowed to glorify his own slavery, himself as means, as tool of genius. The man who remains on the farm without seeing “Paree” is not free. Nor is he who eats prunes for breakfast, not knowing of the existence of orange juice, grapefruit, applesauce, etc. Freedom means knowledge of alternatives. And if everyone has an opportunity to become acquainted with all possible ways of life, with everything that has been thought and said, then “instinctive” or habitual adherence to any group smaller than a world society will be undermined.

Gender Roles from a Cross-Cultural Perspective

Helen Mayer Hacker Previously unpublished

In an earlier portion of this volume the legacy of American gender roles from Europe and ancient civilizations was examined. It is now time to shift our focus to consider current developments in the social roles of women and men in societies other than our own. Viewing variations in gender-role patterning will help to counter the tendency to confuse American gender-role definitions with what is right or “natural.” Ideas concerning feminine delicacy, for example, would not survive the observation of women in India carrying loads of bricks on their heads to building-construction sites, nor would the attribution to women of greater emotionality and intuition hold up in Iran, where men are expected to be sensitive and poetic and women practical and logical. A look at other cultures may also disclose some universals, as well as alternatives, in gender roles that challenge explanation. If the things that men do are everywhere held in higher esteem than women’s activities, the question of causation arises. That is, do men arrogate to themselves the more prestigious work, or does the higher status of the job stem simply from the fact that it is performed by men? Either answer, of course, requires additional explanation.

Further, intensive analysis of particular societies yields insight into the factors that shape and sustain gender roles. It increases our knowledge of the interrelationships among social institutions that tend to keep things as they are and, conversely, the stresses and strains that make for social change.

On the practical side, social reformers may profit from the experiences of other countries, both in assessing the possibilities for change in the United States and in devising suitable strategies for effecting such change.

For the purpose of placing gender roles in cross-cultural perspective, the nations of the world can be divided into two types: planned and unplanned. The more familiar usage of the word “planned” is in regard to the economy, but in the present context the term refers to a conscious attempt on the part of the government to change the traditional roles of the sexes in implementation of an ideology of sex equality. Modifications of gender roles may be occurring in other countries as a consequence of industrialization, urbanization, efforts at population control, or other factors, but since these changes may be viewed primarily as byproducts of other processes, we do not consider them here.

Although differing in governmental form, official ideology, degree of industrialization, per capita income, and many other ways, the Israeli kibbutzim, the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and Sweden have in common their expressed commitment to the liberation of women. None of these attempts as yet has succeeded. Why? Is it because such efforts are foredoomed to failure, or because of special circumstances that can be overcome in the future? We must analyze each case in tum.

The Kibbutz

The founders of the Israeli kibbutz movement more than sixty years ago were devoted to the principles of social and economic equality, including equality between men and women. To implement the socialist dictum of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” collective ownership of the land and other means of production was instituted, and all members shared equally in the joint income. Women were freed from economic as well as legal and social dependence upon a husband. To facilitate their equal participation in the collective work, communal dining rooms, laundry and clothing-repair services, and childcare facilities were established. In the one room occupied by a married couple, housekeeping was reduced to the minimum, and what simple tasks remained were shared by husband and wife.

Parental role differentiation also reached almost the vanishing point. Within one week of delivery the baby was placed in a “baby house,” sharing a room with three or four other infants as close to its age as possible, and in the care of a “metapelet”—in effect a professional mother. (It should be noted that men are not assigned to childcare.) Although the biological mother breastfeeds her baby and both parents visit regularly, the main portion of the socializing process, including the disciplinary function, is assumed by the metapelet. The natural parents provide only nurturance and affection. Since the father has been stripped of his patriarchal role, he provokes no ambivalent feelings in his children. He is only a loving playmate and friend, to be admired for his productive role in the community. More hostility may be felt toward the mother, who, by virtue of her sex, is partially identified with the metapelet, who does command and punish. This situation presents an interesting role reversal from the stereotyped conception of Europe, with its emphasis on the mother-child bond.

Thus, childrearing practices in the early days of the kibbutzim present two interesting innovations: the downplaying of the maternal role, and the dedifferentiation of the maternal and paternal functions. With regard to the first, there has been an ongoing controversy concerning the importance of a constant maternal figure in infancy and early childhood. René Spitz and John Bowlby are representative of those social scientists who attach great importance to mothering and find “maternal deprivation”1 to be a significant factor in the mental retardation and psychological impairment of institutionalized children. On the other hand, some psychologists, such as Bruno Bettelhelm, have averred that the vital aspect of “constancy” is the provision of challenges and satisfactions in the light of a common value system, especially as mediated by the metapelet and peer group, rather than a fixed number of persons who take care of the child.2 Many kinds of evidence point to the successful outcome of collective childrearing in Israel, including personality assessments of various kinds and the signal contributions the kibbutzniks have made to the development of the country and their disproportionate representation in positions of leadership.

The second issue centers on the necessity of parental role differentiation for the correct gender-role identification and emotional adjustment of the child. Talcott Parsons is the leading sociological exponent of the view that “the mother figure is always the more permissive and supportive, the father more denying and demanding.”3 Presumably the mother’s indulgence gives the child emotional security, while the father’s setting of achievement standards equips him to cope effectively with the world of reality. Philip Slater, however, has argued that such differentiation may lead to conflicts in the self-perceptions of the child, with dysfunctional consequences for both him and the society as a whole.4 It should also be noted that correct gender-role identification becomes less problematic in societies lacking a strong demarcation of adult gender roles.

Recent reports from Israel, however, indicate that parents, especially mothers, are making inroads on collective childrearing. They are seeking more time with their children and want them to sleep at home after the age of three. This trend is particularly marked in the “Anglo-Saxon,” more affluent, and right-wing kibbutzim. In all, about 30 out of 280 kibbutzim have shifted in the direction of greater emphasis on the nuclear family. In line with this reversion to traditionality is a growing tendency to take meals at home, to accumulate consumer goods, to elaborate homemaking as mainly the wife’s responsibility, and for women to seek to enhance their sex appeal in dress, grooming, and cosmetics and to diminish their participation in committee work and collective decision-making. More important, the lines between men’s and women’s work have become more sharply drawn. Men predominate in the “productive” or income-yielding branches while women are engaged in the necessary but less prestigious service jobs in the kitchen, laundry, and clothing areas. They also monopolize the early education of the children, a sector that has grown in importance and carries considerable prestige, though little power. The nature of women’s work denies them access to the experience and knowledge requisite for economic policy-making.

Such an outcome, given the structural arrangements originally made to overcome the occupational division between men and women and the professed egalitarianism of the founding generation, was unanticipated. Popular opinion supposes a female retreat from equality, but it would be more accurate to characterize this development as a retreat from the ideal of women doing “masculine” work. Although a few men occasionally worked in the services, there was never any wholesale commitment to the concept of role interchangeability. Rather, the emphasis was on changing women’s roles without any corresponding change in men’s roles. If we accept the proposition that a superficial version of equality was imposed on an underlying traditional gender-role imagery, that only the semblance rather than the reality of equality between the sexes existed in the pioneer stage, then the problem becomes one of explaining the sequence of events that led to the present situation rather than why the kibbutz failed in one of its avowed aims. Two basic perspectives—the biological and the sociological—are once again in conflict.

The first takes its cue from William Graham Sumner’s famous essay “The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over,” in which he asserts that social engineering cannot override “human nature.”5 In other words, woman’s maternal instinct crushed to earth will rise again. The kibbutzim, so the argument runs, represented a noble experiment in sex equality, which flouted the biological basis of gender-role differentiation and thus could be maintained only in crisis conditions. The most modern and sophisticated protagonist of this point of view is Steven Goldberg,6 who explains the “failure” of the kibbutz to challenge successfully the universal gender-role distinctions as stemming from biological factors, manifested, for example, in women’s lower distress threshold for a baby’s crying. If women are more strongly committed to child welfare than men are, one need not even invoke men’s greater aggression, deriving from testosterone, to account for their usurpation of dominant political and economic positions.

According to this line of reasoning, the women pioneers never fully shared the ideological commitment of the men, but were brainwashed by them. They accepted the collective childrearing arrangements, contrary to their heart’s desires, because their work was urgently needed for community survival and because it is the essence of femininity to want to please men. But then, when circumstances permitted, their submerged natural bent could be expressed. True, this re-emergence may not have occurred until the second or even third generation of kibbutzniks, but in a kind of return of the repressed, the older, European-born generation passed on the covert message to the young.

Indeed, adherents of the “natural differences” school explain the temporary abrogation of the primacy of men’s provider role and women’s maternal role as necessitated by the struggle for survival, in which labor resources had to be maximized. Women’s sharing of heavy agricultural work with men was predicated on the relative scarcity of children. As the kibbutzim became economically and militarily more secure, two interrelated developments served to reintroduce the old polarization of labor between the sexes. First, the shift from an economy of necessity to one of comparative “luxury” made expansion of the services possible, and it was “natural” for women, rather than men, to be drawn into these branches. Second, the stability of the kibbutz both permitted and required an increase in the birthrate. The advent of children encouraged and expressed a familistic trend which further reinforced women’s absorption in domestic and childcare activities. In addition, there was a growing tension between family and community as the kibbutzim became larger and more differentiated, and it was no longer so feasible to maintain the primary ties and camaraderie of a small, dedicated group. The growing proportion of children in the total membership enhanced the importance of education, which was considered an appropriate field for the expression of women’s professional aspirations and served to contain any discontent they might feel as a result of their exclusion from top positions in the productive branches. The conclusion from the experience of the kibbutz is that the familial roles that were once imposed upon women, and only temporarily suspended, now come to be their free choice.

The sociological perspective considers, among other things, aspects of the value system that the pioneers sought to implement in their regained homeland. Of central importance was the elevation of manual over intellectual work and the higher prestige accorded the “productive” as compared to the “service” branches. Although at first women worked in the fields and orchards along with the men, they were gradually relegated to the communal kitchen, laundry, and nursery. This development was rationalized on the grounds of men’s greater physical strength and, particularly in those kibbutzim near the frontiers, the need for field workers to take up arms at a moment’s notice.

This approach tries to identify the key social factors in the transition from rough equality to the present differentiation of the sexes. It attempts to specify the “turning points” and the precise nature of the interplay between structural and attitudinal changes. Menachem Rosner7 is representative of the school of thought that stresses the importance of images, conscious or unconscious, held by men and women concerning the aptitudes and inclinations of the two sexes. His contention is that no transformation of consciousness took place in the founding generation.

It is probable that the first generation of women resented being excluded from men’s occupations; the second generation does not want to be part of the masculine world. An amusing twist to women’s renewed interest in personal appearance is given in Edwin Samuel’s The Structure of Society in Israel (New York: Random House, 1969), p. 150: “At one time kibbutz women, in their puritanical fervor, despised frills, jewelry, even makeup. Now each established kibbutz has a well-equipped beauty parlor. Kibbutz stores stock cosmetics, on the theory that a woman’s femininity and beauty are weapons in her fight for equality in a world dominated by men. Women see no reason why they should be unarmed.” Samuel leaves unclear whether women are using sex appeal to wage war on the traditional home front or in the public domain, where they have always been accused of not competing like gentlemen. He brings no empirical evidence to bear upon this point. This generation sees no point in pretending to an equality that it does not have and that is not very rewarding, while losing the advantages of traditional femininity.

Rae Lesser Blumberg pinpoints the arrival of male, childless immigrants as the factor that promoted the erosion of sex equality in the kibbutz.8 She argues that given the disparity in prestige between the productive and the service branches, the kibbutzim might have adopted a principle of seniority whereby the newcomers would enter at the bottom of the ladder. If these men had been assigned to the kitchen and the laundry, then the women they supplanted could have returned to the fields and other “productive” tasks. Such a step was not taken, according to Blumberg, because the new immigrants were overeducated for the jobs available in the kibbutz and could be lured only on the basis of their ideological commitment, an ideology that glorified tractors rather than pots and pans. The young mothers whom they displaced were already committed to the kibbutz and, moreover, had hostages to it in the form of children. The question naturally arises as to why immigrant young men rather than young women had to be propitiated. The answer would have to invoke traditional gender roles in the rest of the world whereby males are more likely than females to embark on autonomous courses of action.

Blumberg’s hypothesis overlooks the possibility that men as well as women could have been directed to the services to make room for the newcomers.9

Ideology in and of itself must be activated by real events in the real world. Given the psychological outlook of both sexes in regard to the aptitudes of the sexes, the official ideology of sex equality might have prolonged the initial sharing of the income-producing branches had it not been for certain types of events, both imminent and external.

The “privatization of women,” then, represented a protective mechanism against greater inroads on their free time, already less than men’s, and against unequal odds in competing with men. The women’s struggle became one of the “transvaluation of values,” of upgrading the castle as contrasted to the counting house. Jobs defined as primarily feminine should bring the same rewards as their masculine counterparts. The slogan became “equality of value achievement” or “equality of satisfaction,” which implies recognition of a sexual division of labor. “Feminine” jobs might be in the collective services, but femininity might be even better upheld and revalued in the domestic domain.

It is evident that the kibbutz has not achieved its aim of equality of opportunity for men and women, although it has more nearly approximated this goal than any previous attempt has. Its shortcomings need not be attributed to the unachieveability of sexual equality but, rather, to specific social factors present at the outset in the settlements, coupled with subsequent developments. The chief factor was the identification of equality with the masculinization of both sexes. The ability of women to perform successfully in “masculine” pursuits depends upon the level of technological development, negating the importance of physical strength and the extent to which women are constrained by child rearing. Any other impediments to women’s equality are imposed by the value system of the society.

Mainland China

With respect to broad social change, including modifications in gender roles, Chinese history can be divided roughly into three periods: “traditional” China, China under Westernizing influences, beginning even under the Ch’ing dynasty toward the close of the nineteenth century and lasting through the establishment of the Republic in 1911 and the rule of the Kuomintang, and finally the Maoist regime, which came to power in 1949. It is a mistake to think of the Communist Revolution as initiating fundamental reforms in the family and the economy, but it did represent the first intensive use of political power and social influence to implement proclaimed policy.10

In thinking about China one must take care not to confuse the lifestyle of the minority gentry class with that of the great bulk of the Chinese peasantry. Few of the latter were able to realize the Confucian ideal of the many-generational extended family unified in a household economy living in the shadow of ancestors. Rather, their meager resources restricted the peasants to small nuclear families not unlike the American household farm families of the last century.

But whether born into the gentry or the peasantry, the Chinese woman has been called “the unhappiest creature on earth.” Whatever her social class, throughout the persistence of the traditional family system for about two thousand years, she was completely subservient to men from birth to death. Indeed, suicide was her only mode of protest and escape. It is interesting to note that in The Dream of the Red Chamber, a famous novel written in the late eighteenth century, almost a dozen of the female characters die young, the aristocrats wasting away because of broken hearts, and the servants killing themselves because of “dishonor” or in devotion to a deceased mistress. All the male characters survive, and the one woman who tries to lead an independent life by becoming a nun is abducted and sold into prostitution.

Let us compare the life chances of two archetypal females. The birth of a girl into a peasant home was no occasion for rejoicing. Indeed, in hard times she might not even be allowed to survive, either killed outright or neglected in childhood. Even the anticipated bride price might not warrant the cost of her maintenance. She was put to work as heavy as she could bear as early as possible and received no schooling. In times of famine or debt she might be sold into slavery or placed in the home of her future husband, whose family was thereby spared the bride price for their son. Similar circumstances might cause her husband to sell or pawn her in later life. In addition to sharing backbreaking labor in the fields, she had the further burden of producing children and taking care of them and the home. Owning nothing in her own right, the woman was herself a chattel. She owed unquestioning obedience and fidelity to her husband, though he might take other women at will. She also had to endure beating and brutality without complaint. Even if she did not suffer at the hands of her husband, she might be raped or otherwise abused by the landlord. These were the experiences that the women of rural China were encouraged to relate in the “Speak Bitterness” sessions organized in the 1940s by the Eighth Route (Communist) Army in an effort to revolutionize the roles of women and to arouse their support for the Communist Revolution.11

In comparison to the gentry, though, the peasant girl had greater opportunities for contact with men outside the family and for exploring the world with unbound feet. Most revealing in this regard is the beautiful anonymous love story “Six Chapters from a Floating Life,” in which the hero defies convention by dressing his wife as a man so that she may accompany him in his travels, ascending mountains and visiting temples and gazing at the moon. Lacking such male conspiratorial help, the gentry-born woman may have been spared physical drudgery and even permitted to while away her leisure hours in writing poetry, but her physical world was circumscribed and her psychological servitude complete. Though in early childhood she may have basked in the tender warmth of her own family, she was early thrust out in an arranged marriage to a strange man whose first loyalty was to his own family and who inevitably sided with his mother in any conflict between her and his wife. Indeed, conjugal love posed a threat to the solidarity of the patrilineal family, in which only men were linked by important kinship ties. The young bride who came as a stranger into her husband’s home could be divorced if she did not please his family. Her position became more secure when she bore a male child, but it was essentially one of “put up or shut up.” She could not even count on economic security because of her complete dependence on her husband, who by caprice or extravagance might reduce the family to ruin.12 At best she could look forward to becoming a mother-in-law herself, with dominion over her sons’ hapless wives. Even in this role her authority in supervising the household was only delegated by a husband who was occupied with more important pursuits, or, if she was widowed, by the indulgence of other males in the family. And whatever her age, a widow had small possibility of remarriage.

The contrast between the two classes of women has been well put by Ray Baber:

The Chinese lady did not soil her hands with labor, but she was actually much less free than the coolie’s wife who labored by his side and of necessity had privileges not available to the lady behind the curtains. But each was doing what man told her to, whether pulling a plow side-by-side with a beast or making her body beautiful to please her lord.13

The hierarchical structure of old China according to generation, age, and sex, in which everyone progressed through his prescribed stations in life, began to be shaken by the impact of the Western world about the middle of the last century. Chinese students who had studied abroad came back with new ideas about democracy, liberalism, science, and the rights of youth and women. Foreign missionaries diffused Western outlooks in hospitals, schools, and churches. Most important, once China had been opened to foreign trade, industrial development began, bringing in its wake rationalistic, matter-of-fact attitudes toward life. Women, as well as men, were drawn into the factories in urban centers. Their new work roles required some education and an end to footbinding.

In this transitional period the physical as well as role segregation of men and women began to be eroded. The sexes, both married and unmarried, mixed in recreation. Chinese women became enthusiastic about cosmetics, new coiffures, and clothes designed to display their physical charms. A feminist movement emerged, symbolized by Madame Sun Yat-sen. Women’s new economic contributions gave them a stronger voice in family affairs, but they also acquired many of the problems and burdens of Western women, such as chief responsibility for the care of children. (In old China the education of sons had been a paternal responsibility.)

These processes were accelerated by the overthrow of the Ch’ing dynasty, when the leaders of the new republic called upon the Chinese people to enter the twentieth century. The Kuomintang, the main political party of the republic of China, founded chiefly by Sun Yat-sen in 1911 and led since 1925 by Chiang Kaishek, promulgated many laws to improve the position of women and young people, including freedom of mate choice, increased rights of divorce for women, and elimination of footbinding, concubinage, child labor, and female slavery. The extent to which the new laws were implemented is another question.

Following the Communist seizure of power in 1949, a policy of sex equality was pursued with force and fervor as part of a concerted effort to break with the past domination of the traditional “li,” or customary obligations, which subordinated the young to the old, both within and between generations, and women to men. No longer was the female to be subject to her father in childhood, her husband in marriage, and her son in widowhood. The Communist Family Law of May 1, 1950, was intended to bring family patterns into line with the new system of production and ownership.

Although the emancipation of women and youth was undoubtedly a part of the Communist ethos in its own right, the dominant consideration was the creation of an independent, mobile work force to make agriculture more productive, speed industrialization, and build socialism. The hedonistic ethic of the republican period was to be supplanted by a selfless dedication to the goals of the Communist regime. Thus, early marriage was frowned upon, not only as a measure of population control, but also to prolong the period of study and work untrammeled by family obligations. Women were encouraged to enter the labor force and to participate with men in political and economic decision-making, but for the good of the country, not primarily as a mode of self-expression. Comradely rather than romantic relationships between the sexes were encouraged. Sexual abstinence prior to late marriage was expected and largely obtained. In contrast to the transitional period, self-adornment of women was deplored and a unisex costume adopted.14

Certainly women are not regarded as sex objects in Communist China, nor do they suffer from a double standard of sexual morality. Discrimination against children born out of wedlock is legally forbidden, and both mother and father are held responsible for the care and maintenance of the child. Official policy calls for equality in employment opportunities and equal pay for equal work. The need for professionally trained workers has enabled women to overcome prejudice in filling formerly masculine positions.15 The rise of paraprofessionals, such as “barefoot doctors,” has also benefited women, helping them to make up for their educational handicaps in comparison to men in programs of rapid and intensive training.16

But with all these great leaps forward, can it be said that women and men are now equal in China? Consider first the relative economic status of the sexes; although women are employed in many formerly male jobs on all skill levels and constitute half of all the doctors, a sexual division of labor still obtains. Most tedious, no mechanized factory work is done by women. It is considered only natural that all the nursery and kindergarten teachers are women, and by the same token women are underrepresented in the more prestigious professions, most notably in university teaching, nor do women hold the leadership positions in the professions. Whether they will attain them once the educational lag is overcome remains to be seen. Further, as in the United States, women form an industrial reserve army and are the first to be laid off when employment drops. Then of course, as happened in 1962, the wife reverts to her traditional homemaking role.

Despite the principle of equal pay for equal work, women earn less than men throughout China. This differential in reward results from the “work points” system, whereby the kinds of jobs men perform, particularly hard manual labor, receive more points than the work women do.

Turning to the home, we find that even though men help, women do more housework. In order to free women for productive work outside the home, the government initiated a program of nurseries and mess halls in both the factories and rural communes. Needless to say, “aunties,” not “uncles,” take care of babies in the nursing rooms of the factories. A few 24-hour-a-day nurseries have been established where children may stay until the age of seven, when they return home to enter primary school. These auxiliary services, however, do not begin to cover the millions of babies in China, and the Chinese wife and mother is still pinpointed as the person responsible for home and children. Though she is encouraged to work and to be active politically, the double burden becomes her patriotic duty.

The obvious consequence is that women cannot compete economically with men and that employers, in addition to their active discrimination, have a rational basis in terms of higher rates of turnover and absenteeism for preferring men. While women’s marital power has been increased by their economic contribution to the home, no real concessions have been asked of the Chinese husband. If his wife does not cook his meals, he may eat in the public mess hall, but he is not required to lose face by performing any traditionally feminine services. Goode suggests that Chinese women would not have been so willing to accept the new burden of work if they had already enjoyed the advantages of Western women, who, by remaining at home in traditional activities, enjoy far more social and material benefits and far fewer disadvantages than their Chinese sisters”17 He concludes that although ideological egalitarianism has gone farther in China than in most Western societies, the family will be retained, and that while female tasks may be upgraded, they will remain as always: laundry, food preparation, care of children, and so forth. In short, the Chinese family system and sex-role allocation will approximate those of the West. Goode’s reasoning appears to be that a family system is required as an emotional haven and social support in any society, particularly a modern industrialized economy, whether authoritarian or bureaucratic. He implies, without supplying a theoretical rationale, that retention of the family is a bar to sex equality.18

Official policy in regard to women in China has taken a zigzag course, reflecting the recognition of popular resistance and changing perceptions of social and economic needs. In the early days of the Revolution, from about 1949 to 1955, women’s rights were emphasized. They were to show themselves the equals of men in work, to marry for love or throw off unwanted husbands of arranged marriages, to become mistresses of their own fate. During this period labor heroines who vied with men in skill and accomplishments were held up as models. By 1954, however, governmental cognizance of male resistance, women’s reluctance to accept work assignments and leave their children in nurseries, the disruption of family life by the rash of divorces, and the dearth of desirable jobs for urban women led to a reaffirmation of women’s family roles as prerequisite to building socialism. Free love and self-fulfillment in work were denounced as bourgeois. On the other hand, complete absorption in motherhood and housewifery to the exclusion of political participation and study was also excoriated as feudal. A “socialist” home would be run with economy and diligence, permitting both spouses to play a fuller part in society. Harmony between the marital partners would flow from correct political views rather than from love or romance. Such harmony was not to be achieved, however, by the wife’s deference to the superior political acumen of her husband; in the words of a report from Moscow, husbands and wives were to “build themselves up ideologically by battering one another with criticism.”19 The Soviet newspaper Nedelva further quoted the Chinese press as advocating “a permanent atmosphere of ideological struggle” and dismissing love as a “psychopathic occupation that wastes time and energy.”

Mao’s tactic for reconciling women’s two roles was the “Great Leap Forward” into communes in both city and countryside. In the rural communes women were assigned the lighter, more menial agricultural chores so that men might be freed for heavier productive labor. In the urban communes women were organized in “housewives’ factories” or “satellite enterprises” around the state factories, where they performed nonmechanized tasks, such as making small crates from old pieces of wood. Although women were paid less than men, for the first time they received their wages directly, not through their husbands. The communes gave women new feelings of self-respect and self-confidence, but, in marked contrast to the kibbutz, the lack of concern for social relations prevented them from becoming an adequate substitute for family life.

By 1962 it was acknowledged that neither work nor collectivized services had liberated Chinese women. In fact, the majority were not only still home-oriented but tainted by Western materialism. The release from Moscow quoted above further reports that “Chinese wives had been acting in an especially bourgeois fashion by worrying about food and clothes instead of ideology and Mao TseTung’s thoughts.” The Party changed its focus from women’s rights to women’s attitudes.20 In fighting imperialism and building socialism the “woman question” would disappear. Thus the Cultural Revolution initiated in 1966 enlisted women in the “true revolution” which “does not differ according to sex.”

What is noteworthy in China’s history so far is that women are told what they should be, and only 10 percent of the Party’s Central Committee, as of September 1973, are female. Leadership in the army, industry, the university, and political committees is still largely male, and popular attitudes still find women better suited by nature to jobs that represent extensions of their traditional homemaking activities. Those women who do occupy leadership positions are largely confined to authority over other women. Moreover, they are young women who have grown up since the Revolution. Yet although Chinese women are far from equal with men, they have made tremendous strides, and in comparison with the “bitter past,” their accomplishments give many a feeling of exhilaration.

The Soviet Union

In assessing the present status of Russian women and probable future trends, it is necessary to consider, as with mainland China, the “bitter past” of prerevolutionary days, the influence of Marxist ideology, and the changing economic, political, and military needs of the country.21 Again, one must make distinctions among the various social classes of Russia.

As in China, peasants made up the vast majority of the Russian population, and until 1860 most of them were serfs attached to the land of their lord. Although both sexes shared a life of unremitting labor, women bore the additional burden of complete subservience to their husbands and were expected to endure their drunkenness and beatings without complaint. Among the well-to-do peasantry the extended patriarchal family was common, in which the wife came to live in her father-in-law’s household, and both spouses were subject to his despotic decisions. Here, too, the wife suffered harassment from her mother-in-law. Marriages were arranged to consolidate property rather than to fulfill personal preferences, and girls, even more than boys, could be married without their consent. The situation is reminiscent of China except that the moral underpinning was provided by Tsarist law and the Greek Orthodox Church rather than the Confucian code and ancestor worship.

Among the poorer peasantry, overcrowding on the land often prevented the father from being able to maintain his expanding family and forced him into long treks in search of employment, leaving his small allotment to be cultivated by his wife, aged parents, and children. (Separation of families for employment reasons was also common in China.) In this manner the patriarchal structure of the family was weakened. Mother-centered families also became a common phenomenon when peasant families moved to industrial centers because of the precariousness of the father’s employment and the wife’s need to obtain some income. The plight of the peasantry exchanging village poverty for urban slums is well portrayed in Gorky’s Mother.

Classics of Russian literature also mirror husband-wife and father-child relationships in the gentry and merchant classes. In the former, alliances of property and prestige were frequently contracted, with subsequent estrangement of husband and wife. Women, though protected and rarely in want, had no scope outside the home and were financially and spiritually dependent on men. The merchant class was depicted as suffering even more under the heavy and conservative hand of the paterfamilias.22

From the middle of the nineteenth century the Russian intelligentsia called for equal rights for women as part of their general protest against slothful and autocratic Russian society. They subscribed to a populist rather than a Marxist socialism and saw husband and wife, chosen by mutual appeal cleansed of materialist motives, as equal partners in service to “the people.” Freedom of divorce, forbidden by canon law until 1917, complemented freedom of choice in marriage. Eventually their vision of the ideal family was rounded out by family planning.

When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, they were moved by both ideological and practical considerations to transform the family and the role of women. Since the primary identification of women in societies for which written records exist has always been in terms of their family roles and responsibilities, fundamental changes in women’s roles are predicated upon changes in the family system.

Marxist ideology proclaims class struggle as the moving force in human history, but underlying class antagonism and prototypical of it is the battle of the sexes. Though it originates in the sexual division of labor in reproduction, men’s biological advantage over women does not bring about male dominance until a stage of economic development is reached, such as a pastoral economy, in which the accumulation of wealth makes property rights important. Then, with women tied to the home and the care of children, the economic and military pursuits that brought wealth and power were appropriated by men. As some men were more successful than others, class divisions grew up. Upper-class men had less need of their wives’ services, either as workers or as sexual partners, since they could buy both in the lower classes. And from wives who have become dependents rather than partners, a standard of sexual fidelity can be demanded to which the husbands do not conform. Chastity of the wife became of supreme importance to a man in removing all doubt that the heir to whom he was bequeathing his property was indeed his son. So Engels argues in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. He further sees women as the means of production of children controlled by men.

With the development of industrial capitalism, the insufficiency of working-class men’s wages brought women directly into a money economy. While Marx deplored the degrading conditions of work foisted on women and children and the undermining of traditional family ties, he recognized that a materialist basis had been created for the emancipation of women by providing them with a source of earnings outside the home.23

The Soviet theoreticians believed that the integration of all women into the economy would liberate them from masculine bondage and foster relationships between men and women based on love and mutual respect. Women’s biological burdens were to be relieved by maternity leaves and legal abortions. (Contraceptive devices seemed to be in short supply, and possibly Russian men were as reluctant as Chinese men to use condoms.) Women’s domestic duties were to be transferred to new social institutions: nursery schools, boarding schools, public dining halls, laundries, and the like. As in China, the emphasis was on changing women’s roles but not tampering with men’s roles. Despite some mild exhortations about helping out at home, there was no real expectation that Russian men would assume equal responsibility for the care of the home and of children.

Other reforms of the early Soviet period included the legalization of common-law marriages, the destigmatization of unmarried mothers, the removal of legal distinctions between children born in or out of wedlock, and easy divorce by mutual consent or even at the wish of only one of the marital partners. But all these measures, designed to transform housewives, whose work in the home was considered “unproductive,” into workers, did not succeed in placing women on an equal footing with men either in the home or in industry. As we have discovered in the United States, present equality of opportunity for previously disadvantaged groups does not wipe out the effects of past discrimination. Treating unequals equally leaves them still unequal. Women’s personal relationships with men are closely intertwined with their economic independence. Although enjoying the majestic equality of the law, Russian women, hindered by illiteracy, lack of skills, their own ingrained attitudes, and male prejudice in hiring, did not achieve economic parity with men. In addition, military and economic exigencies forced the provision of collectivized services to a low place on the Soviet agenda. Wars, revolutions, and purges took a heavy toll of men, driving up their price in sexual bargaining. Scarce men were in a position to exploit women. Finally, old attitudes concerning masculine superiority die hard, and women could not risk alienating potential suitors and husbands by pressing economic or personal demands.

Like the state, the family did not wither away, but it did become disorganized. In practice, easy divorce and the abolition of alimony as degrading to women put the full burden of the support and rearing of children on divorced mothers. In the years immediately following the Revolution, homeless children roamed the roads. The New Economic Policy (NEP), which permitted some private industry, was followed in 1928 by serious attempts at industrialization. The bringing of large numbers of women into industry led to a falling birth rate. Thus, a variety of considerations led to Stalin’s “New Family Policy” beginning in 1934, which denounced divorce, abortion, and sexual freedom. Efforts were made to stabilize the nuclear family as the transmitter of values of the new regime, to protect women from male exploitation, and to encourage motherhood through honorific titles and family allowances. It was recognized that state schools could not meet the problem of childrearing and, under the influence of Makarenko, the Russian Dr. Spock, that parents were the best suppliers of a loving but firm authority in preparing the new generation for Communism and overcoming juvenile delinquency.

The main dilemma, however, remained: how to achieve maximum participation of women in the labor force without restricting their childbearing or causing them to shirk their homemaking duties. In addition, the Soviet woman rejected the revolutionary, sexless styles and aspired to feminine charm via cosmetics and clothes.

Since Russian women experience the same role conflict as Western women, one would not expect them to demonstrate economic equality with men, and indeed “they are underrepresented in the occupations that embody directive, managerial, decision-making, and executive functions and...overrepresented in the subordinate and junior positions and in the menial jobs.”24 Much has been made of Russian women’s better showing in such professions as medicine and engineering in comparison with Western women, but their entry into these professions was facilitated by a manpower vacuum and male preference for more technical occupations. The proportion of women in medicine and teaching has already begun to decline.

Furthermore, although a favored minority are engaged in professional work, Russian women make up 80 percent of the industrial sector, including the heavy, dirty, strenuous jobs in coal mining, asphalt paving, stevedoring, and foundry work, for which they are considered natural candidates. In the allocation of jobs between men and women we find a complex interplay of social values and technological factors.

Lenin reputedly said that every cook could govern, and by cooks he presumably meant women. Even the briefest review of gender roles in the Soviet Union should inquire into women’s participation in political life. Obviously, the Communist Party is the most important center of power in the Soviet Union. Currently, women constitute about 20 percent of Party members, but they are largely concentrated in the lower ranks. In regard to the Soviets, which are more facade than fact of political power, women are not represented proportionately, but their role is in striking contrast to both prerevolutionary Russia and the contemporary United States.

From the Russian experience to date no conclusions can be drawn with regard to the future of gender roles either in the Soviet Union or in other industrialized societies. Certainly the Soviet case provides no refutation of the possibility of the abolition of the family or of the social and economic equality of men and women.

Sweden25

In contrast to the recent history of China and the Soviet Union, that of Sweden does not reveal dramatic changes of policy dictated by a small group of policy makers, nor was there ever any attempt to abolish the nuclear family. Although more serious about social reforms, more committed to social democracy, and more homogeneous in its population than the United States, Sweden is close to our own country in its governmental structure and economic development, and it too has adopted measures that sometimes conflict with each other and reflect different interest groups in the society. In Sweden, both debate about gender roles and legislative action concerning them have antedated, and achieved greater salience, than those in the United States.

In regard to social change and feminist thinking, four periods may be identified. First, in the early nineteenth century Sweden was still a predominantly agricultural and rural society, but the traditional rewards accruing to the gender roles of the patriarchal family were threatened by a population explosion, which touched off attacks on conventional marriage. The early stages of industrialization mark the second period, when migration to the towns began and economic necessity prompted women as well as men to seek employment in the mills and factories. Laws and customs stemming from the old agrarian barter economy persisted, however, and women suffered many disadvantages. Before the Marriage Act of 1921, women were considered the wards of their husbands and had no right to their own earnings. Education beyond the elementary school was denied to all but the wealthy few. Both government and industry discriminated against women in a variety of ways. This period, though, saw the beginning of a strong feminist movement, sparked by the writing of Frederika Bremer and Ellen Key. Public consciousness was also raised by the plays of the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen, most notably A Doll’s House, which protested the submergence of the wife’s identity into that of her husband. August Strindberg, a penetrating chronicler of the war of the sexes, came out for equality in the rights and obligations of marital partners in the preface to the first volume of Married, published in 1884. Although he advocated payment by the husband to his wife for domestic services, he did not consider the reverse situation.

The effects of industrialization on gender roles varied according to social class. Lower-class women either contributed to the support of the family or became self-supporting, while upper- and middle-class wives supervised servants in the activities which lower-class women carried as a double burden. Their position was protected, privileged, parochial, and provincial.

As in other Western countries, the state took over many of the protective functions formerly performed by the agrarian family. In its collective provisions for old age, sickness, unemployment, and other exigencies of life Sweden is most advanced, but both political authority and economic power were reserved for men. In this third stage of advanced industrialization women achieved a superficial equality; that is, they obtained equal political and educational rights. Their place in the labor force was acknowledged and protected by various legislative reforms, such as the prohibition against being discharged on the grounds of marriage or pregnancy.

The l960s in Sweden initiated the fourth period of heightened debate concerning ideal gender roles and the means required to realize them. What may be unique to Sweden is the emphasis on changing men’s roles as well as women’s. Thus, there is agitation for a reduction in men’s work time to encourage greater investment in their husband, father, and homemaker roles. This is termed “male emancipation.” The demand is also heard that women should not profit in any way from marriage, for example, through tax policies that discriminate against unmarried persons or pensions for widows but not for widowers. It is recognized that no fundamental change in women’s roles can be brought about without corresponding alterations in men’s roles and that, indeed, some reforms made in the name of child welfare have served to tie women more closely to the home rather than to expand their freedom of choice. Conflicts and confusion of policies reflect divergent interests and outlooks in the society. While the moderates would upgrade the housewife role and assist those wives who desire an additional work role with vocational training, job placement, and collectivized services, the radicals would eliminate all differences in social expectations for the two sexes in that neither the parenting nor the provider role would be more the province of one sex than the other. It can be fairly said that consciousness is more elevated in Sweden than in the United States, but the lag in implementation of sex equality is no less.

Although labor-force participation rates for Swedish married women vary from something more than a fourth to almost twothirds, depending on the number and ages of their children, the occupational segregation of Swedish men and women is such that they are essentially noncompeting groups. Thus, during the postwar years Sweden has simultaneously suffered from labor shortages in certain “masculine” occupations and female unemployment. “Women’s entry into male occupations is hindered by employer prejudice, residential immobility, lack of vocational guidance and training, lower levels of aspiration, and many other factors that continue to operate in Sweden as in the United States. Men are not tempted into traditional female occupations because of their lower pay and prestige. In 1966, for full-time employees, the average Swedish woman’s wage was about three-fourths that of the average Swedish man. The comparable figure is 59 percent for American women.26

Although Swedish women won the right to vote in 1920 and vote in as high a proportion as men, they are poorly represented in elective bodies. In 1968 they constituted less than 10 percent of the Riksdag, admittedly a better showing than that of American women in Congress. Their participation at regional and municipal levels is low.

One might suppose that the high level of interest in gender roles in a self-proclaimed welfare state, the intensive scrutiny of all executive and legislative measures in terms of their effects on the full integration of women into the economy, and the tremendous social effort invested in implementing sex equality might have produced more spectacular results. The fact is, though, that facilities for childcare, the construction of service apartments, and other reforms to help working mothers not only have lagged far behind the need but have hardly approached the growth in child allowances, student grants, and general economic expansion. Part of the explanation may be found in the persistence of social attitudes that look askance at father’s sharing half or more of the parenting role, and the continued expectation on the part of employers that the man’s salary will also cover the otherwise unpaid domestic services of the wife. The perpetuation of such attitudes is projected into the future by the differential socialization of Swedish boys and girls into sex-typed self-concepts and life aspirations.

Summary and Conclusions

What can be concluded from this brief review of governmental efforts to achieve sex equality? Can any generalizations be made about its feasibility or the factors, both temporary and permanent, that foster or hold back achievement of the full human potentialities of both women and men? As a preliminary to answering these questions, it may be useful to summarize both the common and the distinguishing features of the Israeli kibbutzim, Red China, the USSR, and Sweden.

Stage of Economic Development

The Soviet Union and China were predominantly agricultural when their revolutions occurred. Women’s work was needed both for more efficient agriculture and to industrialize the country. No doubt the Communists in both countries were sincere in their wish to emancipate women, but chiefly to make women equal with men in political and economic obligations to the state. Therefore, equal access to jobs and equal pay for comparable skill took second place to economic productivity.

In Israel the kibbutzim began as primarily agricultural, although many later added industrial enterprises. The pioneers did not come from the peasantry, however, but were craftsmen, small businessmen, and scholars. Nevertheless, they too felt the necessity of making the optimum allocation of labor power, which they defined as freeing women from domestic and childrearing responsibilities to engage in “productive” work and reserving men for jobs which it was felt they could perform better than women. To what extent their categorization of jobs as either masculine or feminine corresponded to objective differences between the sexes is debatable.

Sweden also was primarily agrarian when the debate on gender roles began, but although the development of an industrial economy undermined women’s traditional roles in the old agricultural barter economy, there was no pressing need for their menial labor either in the fields or in industry. Therefore, no external pressure was exerted on Swedish women to work full-time outside their homes, nor did the government have to face the dilemma of reconciling the divergent social needs for women’s public and private services.

Strategies for Tapping Woman Power

Both China and the Soviet Union passed through a phase of emphasis on individual freedom for women, an all-out effort to snap the chains of their feudal bondage. Thus, marriage on the basis of love, divorce by mutual consent or even at one spouse’s petition, abortion on demand, no stigmatization of children born out of wedlock or of unwed mothers, paternal responsibility for child support, and the promise of collectivized childcare, cooking, and laundry facilities were among the measures calculated to permit women to act as free agents. Further, women were urged, either as labor heroines in China or as Stakhanovites in Russia, to vie with men in their creativity on the job, production records, and performance of physically demanding jobs. Men were exhorted to overcome traditional prejudices in their attitudes toward women workers and to relinquish masculine prerogatives in the home.

This policy was subsequently modified in both countries because it did not accomplish the primary purpose of enhanced female productivity and, moreover, came into conflict with other goals of the regime, such as stability of family life and, in the USSR, a higher birthrate. Since the emancipation of women was viewed as part and parcel of the class struggle, it required little ideological juggling on the part of the leadership to castigate the feminist movement as bourgeois and to counsel women to postpone their demands or subordinate them to the construction of a socialist society secured against its enemies. In varying degrees the traditional family, with its implications of a double standard and gender-role segregation, was rehabilitated, partly in recognition of the unchanged consciousness of the bulk of the people, of the lag in collectivized services, and of the need for the protection of women, who remained unequal competitors with men economically and in personal relations.

Both China and the USSR appear to be moving in the direction of the United States and Western Europe. As the economy grows more productive and illiteracy of women is overcome, they will be increasingly released from full-time, unskilled manual labor. Some relief from the double burden of domestic duties plus outside work, which women now carry, will be provided by the extension of part-time jobs and the redefinition of the homemaker role as socially productive, as well as by the expansion of childcare facilities and social services. There is little evidence of a serious attempt to magnify men’s homemaking and childcare roles or to encourage them to enter occupations now dominated by women (with the possible exception of medicine). In the meantime women are not exonerated from their work and civic obligations and enjoy less free time than men. Still, the government wages a losing battle against bourgeois contentment. Much like blue-collar women in the United States, the masses of Chinese and Russian women do not find their work rewards in prestige and pay sufficient to offset the temptations of a higher level of living and shifting of the main economic burden to men. Altruistic ideals keep the pioneer generation at its post, but once minimal needs are assured, rising expectations sharpen women’s perception of the inequalities in the opportunity structure, which make at least a partial retreat into traditional home routines a desirable alternative. Both the ideological and the economic bases for gender-role interchangeability in China and the USSR are still lacking.

The kibbutzim went farther than either China or the USSR in breaking down the patriarchal family and in making women economically independent of their husbands, but their value system gave priority to the production of goods, not to services. Further, despite the “ideal” norms of sex equality, members held stereotyped conceptions of the kinds of work best suited to each sex. In the early days these attitudes were masked by the need for women to work in the fields so that their labor power would not be sacrificed to childbearing and childrearing. Continuity of the group was accomplished mainly through the recruitment of new members. However, as the kibbutzim grew in wealth and numbers, children were desired as guarantors of community survival. This development affected women in two ways. First, pregnant women and nursing mothers were transferred to light and later part-time tasks in order to be near their babies, a move dictated in part by an ideology of gallantry not observed in the early days of industrialism in England or in many peasant societies. Second, the diversification and need for leadership in the kibbutz seemed to require a job continuity undisrupted by women’s temporary abstentions. That these considerations were not wholly “objective” is attested by the community’s willingness to overlook men’s periods of absence for military purposes and the fact that the division of labor by sex in the kibbutz extended far beyond any limitations that might be imposed by women’s comparative physical weakness or maternal functions. Thus, women might be assigned to the orchards but not to the carpentry shop, or to teach in the elementary school but not the high school. In contrast to the United States and possibly Sweden, Chinese, Russian, and kibbutz women were made to feel guilty if their family obligations interfered with their community and work responsibilities, but there is no difference among these societies with respect to the social expectation that men need not share equally in the functions of maintenance of the home and primary socialization of the children.

Need we conclude from the experience of those societies in which official policy supported an integration of feminine and masculine gender roles that no institutional framework can be engineered which provides equally for the expressive and economic desires of men and women, that there are inherent limitations on such equality arising either from the social consequences of biological differences between men and women or from the functional prerequisites of any type of social organization? Not necessarily, since it is evident from the foregoing survey that all four societies lacked one or more of the essential conditions for genuine equality of the sexes.

What are these preconditions? They would seem to spring from a complex interplay of social values and technological factors, both internal and external to the society. Let us look first at real social values, as opposed to ideal social values or ideology. It is possible to give lip service to official or prescribed norms, but not to believe in them in a concrete way or in specific instances. On the other hand, “real” ideals too may not correspond to actual behavior, so that we are dealing with three levels: (1) what people think they should hold as ideal, (2) what their ideals really are, and (3) discrepancies between their “real” ideals and their ability to put them into practice. The following discussion is pitched at the second level of “real” ideals. The ideological preconditions for sex equality, then, are:

Internalized values that do not ascribe different interests and aptitudes on the basis of sex. This does not preclude observation of empirical differences between the “average” man and “average” woman but does not accord these differences greater importance than those obtaining within each sex.

Internalized values that give equal worth to production for use (including reproduction and services) and production for exchange—those that establish equivalency between men’s and women’s traditional functions, which in the contemporary context means upgrading activities monopolized by women to the extent that (1) women will derive self-esteem from them; (2) men, except for childbearing, will be attracted to them; and (3) under the principle that, as men bear arms for the state, women bear children, social arrangements will be made to compensate women for childbearing, including “mother’s preference” on civil service examinations, scholarships, no loss of seniority, pension rights, or even the job itself. On the other hand, women are to derive no benefit from the wifely status, nor will women receive special consideration for “masculine” types of job turnover which entails a loss of seniority, risks of discontinuity, etc.

A dominant value system that does not have efficiency at its apex but treasures quality of life and interpersonal relationships as highly as getting the most for the least.4. Most important, but almost too obvious to mention, popular consensus on the desirability of making biological sex an irrelevant criterion in filling any status in the society. With no prejudgments on a categorical basis, all positions will be filled on the basis of individual merit, regardless of sex or any other group characteristic.

Such a transformation of the value system, however, must be sustained by certain key technological, economic, and political factors:

A physical plant that does not require more muscular power than is possessed by the average woman. (On the whole, women have 70 percent of the muscular strength of men, but the average man does not use more than 20 to 40 percent of his muscle power on the majority of industrial jobs.) Present machinery can be adjusted to a woman’s height and hand size. Increasingly, automation opens up new jobs to women. A dramatic case in point is the sub situation of the ignition key for the hand crank in starting automobiles, an invention that made every woman a potential driver. Increased mechanization of jobs that are now performed chiefly by women, particularly in “developing” countries, would have the further effect of raising productivity and thus helping bridge the earnings gap between men and women.

Sufficient capital accumulation to permit an “adequate” diversion of productive capacity into consumer goods and services. Such capital accumulation, however, is usually a concomitant of the technological development discussed in the preceding point. A capital surplus is needed both to build machinery and to transfer family functions to other agencies. Further, in an economy of sheer survival, social values that ignore the physical advantages of men are not likely to be maintained. Thus, it has been the experience of rural communes in the United States that a traditional division of labor by sex develops as a condition of group subsistence.

These technological and economic requisites will not suffice unless they are predicated on a world in which military expenses are minimal. Although historically wars have given women their greatest opportunities, they have not permanently altered their status as an industrial reserve army.

In conclusion, it is possible that these three “materialist” and “ideological” conditions may come about as unanticipated consequences of unplanned social change, but it is more likely that they will have to be abetted by a strong feminist movement supported by both men and women.

Notes

John Bowlby. 1951. Maternal Care and Mental Health. Geneva: World Health Organization Monograph; René Spitz. 1945. “Hospitalism: An Inquiry into the Genesis of Psychiatric Conditions in Early Childhood,” Pp. 53-74 in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. New York: International Universities Press, I.

Bruno Bettelheim. 1970. Children of the Dream. New York: Avon Books, pp. 211-16.

Talcott Parsons and Robert F. Bales. 1955. Family Socialization and Interaction Process. New York: Free Press, p. 80.

Philip Slater. 1961. “Parental Role Differentiation.” American Journal of Sociology 67(3): 296-311.

William Graham Sumner. 1963. Social Darwinism. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, chap. 12.

Steven Goldberg. 1973. The Inevitability of Patriarchy. New York: William Morrow, p. 126.

Menachem Rosner. 1967. “Women in the Kibbutz: Changing Status and Concept.” Asia and African Studies 3: 35-68.

Rae Lesser Blumberg. 1973. “Women of the Kibbutz: Retreat from Sexual Equality.” Paper presented at meetings of the Society for Applied Anthropology, Tucson, Arizona.

Personal conversation with Menachem Rosner, May 1974.

William J. Goode. 1970. World Revolution and Family Patterns. New York: Free Press, p. 270.

Ruth Sidel. 1973. Women and Child Care in China. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, p. 17.

Marion J. Levy, Jr.. 1968. The Family Revolution in Modern China. New York: Atheneum Press, p. 150.

Ray E. Baber. 1953. Marriage and the Family, 2d ed. New York: McGrawHill, p. 332.

Myra Roper. 1966. China: The Surprising Country. New York: Doubleday. Roper reports the laughter that greeted her purchase of a jacket identifiable as masculine rather than feminine solely by virtue of its having four rather than two pockets.

Levy, op. cit., p. 320.

Sidel, op. cit., p. 181.

Goode, op. cit., p. 303.

Ibid, p. 304.

New York Times (February 18, 1973).

Charlotte Bunny Cohen. 1970. “Women of China,” Pp. 385-417 in Sisterhood Is Powerful, edited by Robin Morgan. New York: Random House. See also Janet Weitzner Salaff and Judith Merkle. 1970. “Women and Revolution: The Lessons of the Soviet Union and China.” Socialist Revolution 1:4: 39-72.

See Bernice G. Rosenthal. 1973. “The Roles and Status of Women in the Soviet Union.” Paper presented at meetings of the American Anthropological Association for a delineation of three distinct periods (1917-28, 1928-53, and 1953 to the present) in the evolution of Soviet policy toward women corresponding to economic and political changes in Russian society and the negative consequences of previous policies.

Philip Mosely. 1959. “The Russian Family: Old Style and New.” Pp. 105-22 in The Family: Its Functions and Destiny, edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen. New York: Harper & Row.

Karl Marx. 1906. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. New York: Modern Library, p. 536.

Mark G. Field and Karen I. Flynn. 1970. “Worker, Mother, Housewife: Soviet Woman Today.” Pp. 262 in Sex Roles in Changing Society, edited by Georgene H. Seward and Robert C. Williamson. New York: Random House.

The discussion of Sweden is especially indebted to Edmund Dahlstrom (Ed.). 1971. The Changing Roles of Men and Women. Boston: Beacon Press.

Herbert Stein. 1972. “Women’s Second Economic Revolution.” Ladies’ Home Journal October.

Sex Roles in Black Society: Caste Versus Caste

Helen M. Hacker Previously unpublished

Any discussion of Black sex roles is charged with controversy. There is disagreement on the historical facts of the Afro-American family as well as its contemporary nature. In the triangle formed by family organization, discriminatory social institutions, and individual disadvantage, different analysts trace different trajectories. The ordering of the chain of causation becomes a political issue since the kind of social policy advocated may flow from one’s assessment of Black history and current Black experience. Indeed the temptation is great to evaluate statements about Black sex and family roles more in accordance with their implications for social action, race pride, and white guilt than in terms of their validity. Further, many statements are denied in one breath, and explained away in the next. Thus, one might conclude from some recent articles in this area that there is no Black matriarchy, but matriarchy is just as good, if not better than, patriarchy. Or, the Black man is not impotent, but whites castrated him.

Any analysis of sex roles, whether Black or white, must be modulated according to the interaction among structural, cultural, and social class factors. That white social structure and cultural values have been prime movers and distorters of Black sex roles has been long recognized, but it has been the task of Black writers to show how the oppression of Blacks has served to support the white segregation of sex roles.

This paper represents a selective abstraction from a projected textbook chapter, and thus will not pretend to fulfill the promise of the title except to concentrate on the problem following the colon—if race and sex are both indicative of a caste-like status, what is the relationship between them for Black people of both sexes, and does this relationship vary by class membership and/or aspirations? Most importantly, for whom do race-consciousness and sex-consciousness conflict or converge?

Whatever the imputed cause or combinations of causes—whether African survivals, the heritage of Black experiences during the slavery and Reconstruction periods, the transplantation from the rural south to urban centers, both north and south, contemporary ghettoization, including oppressive social conditions and discriminatory policies, conventional wisdom sees Black sex roles today as the dark mirror image of their white counterparts. It is summed up in the adage that in America only the white man and the Black woman are free.

The alleged greater freedom of Black women, as compared to white women, arose from their lack of opportunity of exchanging sexual fidelity for economic support from a Black man. Black men are considered unfree to the extent that they were prevented from acquiring the economic means to support a wife and family in the white middle class or working class manner and to enact a patriarchal role. Their inability to compete economically and sexually with white men has been termed their emasculation. But one can also reverse the valences, and view some characteristics of Black family forms, such as male-female egalitarianism, the sexual freedom of women, the non-stigmatization of out-of-wedlock children, as the unanticipated positive consequences of negative social action—in this case, white racism.

In Linton’s classic definition of a role as putting into practice a collection of rights and duties associated with a status the classification of a behavior as a right or a duty from the point of view of the actor may vary according to circumstances. Thus, it may be asked whether a husband has the right or the duty of kissing his wife.

Definitions of Black sex roles have been shaped largely by the confinement of Blacks to the lower class. Whether an “authentic” Black culture which may make Blacks the cultural leapers, rather than laggers, for mainstream society will survive the free passage of Blacks into middle class ranks and their structural assimilation into the dominant society is a question of dramatic importance, but for which present evidence is inconclusive and contradictory. Nevertheless, many analysts and social advocates have taken positions on one side or the other, or affirm both simultaneously. For example, in a study of Black families “above the lower class or underclass” Scanzeni reports that they are adopting the family forms of the environing society, and contends that the conjugal family in which the husband fulfills his chief role obligations as provider in exchange for the wife’s tendering of expressive rewards is not distinctively white but adaptive to a “modern, individualistic, achievement-oriented, acquisitive society.” He, as well as others, believes the evidence indicates that even lower-class Blacks share this aspiration as prerequisite to their participation in the “American dream,” and that their present way of life is more faute de miexu than positive affirmation of deviant values. He states further: “It is not a coincidence, for example, that the Black Muslims, once they adopted a work ethic virtually indistinguishable from that of the dominant society, have likewise evolved an identical family form.” Any difference between white and Black family patterns reflects only differential access to the economic rewards of the total society, he feels.

However, in another book, entitled Sexual Bargaining: Power Politics in American Marriage, he does not see the struggle of American women to become equal partners with their husbands, interchanging both economic and expressive roles, as incompatible with an achievement-oriented society. Of course a “transvaluation of values” along humanistic, non-material lines would obviate any necessity for sex role segregation for both Blacks and whites. In the meantime more research is needed on the lifestyles of middle-class Blacks, perhaps with samples stratified according to the length of time in middle-class status, to determine whether divergences between whites and Blacks of similar socio-economic status will persist.

Now returning to the problem posed by the subtitle “caste versus caste” we may ask whether Black women suffer more from racism or from sexism, and whether Black men must be sexists in order to carry on the Black struggle. To these two castes of sex and race a third status should be added—that of class. So the question becomes: Need there be conflicts among these memberships—sex versus class, class versus race, race versus sex? Movements professing the interests of minority members of each of these groupings have claimed, in what Lasswell has termed “an overgeneralization of protest,” that they will free the others. Marxist revolutionary parties say a socialist society will emancipate women from their social and economic dependence upon men by integrating them into public activities. The present barrier between Black and white fostered by the divide and conquer strategy of the capitalist class will be broken down when all must be workers, regardless of sex or race, and share according to their needs in the bounty of an unfettered production.

Black power, by putting an end to discrimination against Blacks, will secure the position of middle class Blacks, unchain lower-class Black men from poverty, and thereby provide the Black woman with a confident and responsible male partner. Further, the white man will be relieved of his burden of guilt, the white woman may step down from her pedestal, and the productivity of the whole society be enhanced by the development of Black talent.

The women’s movement will benefit Black and lower-class white women through the economic upgrading of all women, giving them control of their own bodies in sex and reproduction, and equalizing the burdens of homemaking and childcare either by redistribution of tasks in the home or collectivized services. Men will acquire female partners to share their responsibilities and be permitted more expression of their “feminine” feelings.

Not only does each of these three movements based on one of the class, race, or sex memberships claim to liberate the other two, but it also attributes competing allegiances to false consciousness. Thus, in appealing to poor women feminists say that socialism will not necessarily free women, or at least has not done so in Marxist countries, nor will Black power terminate discrimination against women. Black nationalists say that male-female relationships in the Black community have been distorted by whites, and that women’s liberation, if not a direct attempt to coopt Black women away from the Black struggle, is at best irrelevant to the primary interest of the Black woman in economic opportunity for the Black man. (Their concern with white women appears limited to interracial marriages.) Socialists say that although capitalists have set whites against Blacks, only working-class solidarity can end the oppression of Blacks, while Black Nationalism which does not overthrow capitalism perpetuates their exploitation by a white ruling class and its Black bourgeois allies.

In taking these positions they are implying that it is necessary for each minority group to organize around its own oppression in order to counter the resistance of the dominant group which may stand to lose both materially and psychologically. Let us look at the situation from the standpoint of the poor Black woman, one of triple jeopardy. In acceding to her demands as a woman, men, both white and Black, will lose their monopoly of scarce resources, dominance in dyadic relations, exemption from domestic responsibilities, one-sided services, sexual privileges, deference from a subordinate caste, and feelings of superiority. In granting her full equality as a Black, whites, both male and female, have the number of their competitors increased and suffer a prestige loss. In lifting her out of poverty, middle-class people, both white and Black, lose a source of domestic help and cheap labor, and may have to pay higher taxes, in addition to having competition increased and prestige diminished. (Of course, as already suggested, these dominant groups have much to gain as well.)

Or, putting it another way, will it serve her better to join forces with poor whites, middle class women, or Black men? It is not just a question of priorities because of conflicting interests of the beneficiaries of these movements. Thus, Black Liberation and Women’s Liberation make Black men and white women competitors for the same jobs. A Black writer, for example, complains that Black postal carriers have been displaced by hippy-type white college girls who have an easy educational advantage. As for socialist and revolutionary parties, there have been instances when immediate Black interests were jettisoned or exploited for propaganda purposes, of labor unions which used Black support without due reward. Still it would seem that the more salient conflict for Black women is that between Women’s Liberation and Black Liberation, with its male-dominant overtones. Can the two battles be waged simultaneously or does an advance on one front mean a setback on the other? Let us examine first the argument for the precedence of Blackness over femaleness.

The Black Power movement assumes that the fate of the Black woman is inextricably linked to that of the Black man, and that her interests will be served best by promotion of his. It therefore concentrates on her role as wife and mother rather than as wage-earner. In this role she does not receive as much financial and emotional support as her white counterpart. Although considerable progress has been made in the last decade, the Black man has not been able to achieve economic parity with the white man. He is prevented from doing so by the discrimination he encounters in the white opportunity structure—educational, occupations, legal, political, etc.; and by a lack of achievement motivation and crushed feelings of manliness engendered both by discrimination and early childhood experiences in a matri-focal family in which he lacks an adequate male model and suffers other deprivations stemming from poverty and ghettoization. (I recognize that every statement in this stereotypical account is subject to scholarly dispute.) As long as Black men are made to feel the mark of oppression, the Black struggle will by stymied and Black women, along with Black men, will be consumed in the crucibles of identity and ambivalence. Therefore, in their own self-interest Black women should concentrate their efforts on building up Black men, even at the cost—or seeming advantage—of a retreat into domesticity. Their burdens as Blacks, both directly and as foisted upon them through the deficiencies of Black males as husbands, fathers, and providers are of far greater importance than the small advantages over Black men which they have wrested from the white power structure or may hope to do in the future. They have far more in common with Black men than with white women.

This approach would counsel Black women to emulate the family patterns which many middle class white women are now seeking to break out of—with the exception that birth control through contraception, abortion, and most emphatically, sterilization should be resisted as genocide. Of course, in addition to playing a traditional family role, Black women would be devotedly supportive to Black men in the Black Liberation Movement.

On the psychological side especially, Black Nationalism may be seen as improving the relationships between Black men and Black women. During the long generations in which they lived in the shadow of white society their interaction was disrupted in two ways. First, having interiorized white standards of attractiveness, they could not develop a concept of themselves as beautiful. The desirability of a woman grew in proportion to her approximation of white physical features. In extreme form this feeling led to the fantasy of converting Blacks into whites, as so dramatically expressed by Eldridge Cleaver in Soul on Ice, through the medium of a character he dubs “the Lazarus:” “Every time I embrace a black woman I’m embracing slavery, and when I put my arms around a white woman, well, I’m hugging freedom.”

Secondly, the frustrations endured by Black men could not be relieved in aggression towards the dominant whites, but had to be vented against Blacks—oneself, other Black men, or Black women. Black women retaliated with whatever weapons, physical or psychological, they had at hand. This sex antagonism, derivative of the color caste system, has been characterized as “hateful partners in a harrowing dance.” In recent years, however, the impression garnered from the Black press and television shows is that the Black movement with its “Black is beautiful” emphasis is bringing about a new honeymoon between Black men and women. Helen H. King, writing in Ebony, March 1971, speaks of the new “lovemaking” between Black men and women which leaves little room for women’s liberation. Indeed white women who steal scarce Black men are often regarded as the real enemy by “together” Black women.

But there are many Black spokeswomen who feel that making the economic advantage of the Black man the highest priority will not serve the immediate interests of Black women, nor even hasten the Black Revolution. First to be noted is the short supply of eligible Black men, whose ranks are depleted by higher mortality rates, homicide, long prison sentences, war casualties, long journeys in search of a job, lesser propensity to marry, etc. The ratio of Black females to males increases for every age after fifteen, and in the crucial age range 25-34 the 1970 ratio was 84.3. Thus, unless they dare to flout the double standard of the Black community by marrying white men, large numbers of Black women will have to remain husbandless.

Secondly, whether living with a husband or not, the Black woman’s earnings are vital to herself and her family. In 1971 29% of Black families were headed by a woman, compared with only 9% of white families. Among husband-wife families, 54% of the wives in Black families were working, in comparison to 38% of white wives, and in these dual-earner families Black wives contributed 31% of the family income and white wives, 26%.

Thirdly, if Black women ever held a relatively favored positon over Black men, it can no longer be said that they are outpacing them. Black men are better represented in the professions and high paying jobs, are more likely to have baccalaureate and advanced degrees, and earn more money than women, white or Black. In the words of a Black feminist and professor of American civilization, Dr. Pauli Murray:

“In the face of their multiple disadvantages, it seems clear that black women can neither postpone nor subordinate the fight against sex discrimination to the Black Revolution. Many of them must expect to be self-supporting, and perhaps to support others for a considerable period or for life. In these circumstances, while efforts to raise educational and employment levels for black males will ease some of the economic and social burdens now carried by many black women, for a large and apparently growing minority these burdens will continue. As a matter of sheer survival black women have no alternative but to insist upon equal opportunities without regard to sex in training, education, and employment. Given their heavy family responsibilities, the outlook for their children will be bleak indeed unless they are encouraged in every way to develop their potential skills and earning power.”

Fourthly, apart from the fact that the advancement of Black women in itself represents more than half the Black population, the freedom and independence of the Black woman constitutes a vital asset in the Black movement. Using her as a “slave of the slave” has the effect of reinforcing the color caste system by providing a safety valve for the frustrations of Black men who might otherwise channel their energies into the Black struggle. More importantly, Blacks need all the resources they can muster. Female talent and productivity must not be lost to home chores and a torrent of babies.

Lastly, it should be noted that beyond equal pay for comparable skills and other demands relating to economic opportunities, some of the specific planks of the feminist platform have special application to the situation of Black women. These include: abortion on demand without sterilization, twenty-four hour daycare centers, collectivization of social services, redistribution of domestic tasks, and other measures calculated to meet needs of Black women which are even more pressing for them than for white women.

Even though large numbers of Black women, like their white sisters, have not been drawn into the female liberation movement, Black women appear to be even more sympathetic to feminist strivings than white women. Some of the findings of a 1972 poll of a national cross-section of women (3,000) and men (1,000) conducted by Louis Harris and Associates for Virginia Slims are illuminating in this regard:

Black

White

% Women

% Men

% Women

% Men

Favor efforts to strengthen or change women’s status in society.

62

47

45

50

Sympathize with efforts of women’s liberation groups.

67

50

35

40

Feel that being a woman has prevented me from doing some of the things I had hoped to do in life.

18

-

6

-

(Agrees frequently with the following feelings)

To get ahead in this world, a woman has to be twice as good at what she does as a man is.

36

-

25

-

I hope that my daughter will have a more interesting career outside the home than I have had.

42

-

19

-

My education is being wasted, since I never get to use what I learned in school in my everyday life.

12

-

7

-

If I had been a man, I would have gotten a lot further in this world.

17

-

8

-

Men are better at economics and business than women.

39

-

50

-

Moreover, Black women in a number of other questions think a woman president would do a better job in dealing with problems of the poor, avoiding war, supporting the arts, handling criminals, managing the economy, and living up to her principles.

Time does not permit the presentation of other evidence, such as the disproportionate number of Black women as compared to white who obtained legal abortions in New York City and New York State in 1972.

In conclusion, we may say that although poor black women suffer triple exploitation, their struggle against discrimination as women should be of immediate vital importance to them.

The Women’s Movement: Report from Nairobi

Helen M. Hacker and Audrey Meyer Previously unpublished

We went to Kenya last July to participate in Forum ’85, the unofficial meetings preceding the official United Nations Conference marking the end of the International Decade for Women. As study tour members of the International Health Concepts Exchange, we visited hospitals and other health facilities as part of our safari. Since no sociological organization had established itself as an NGO (non-governmental organization with consultative status to the U.N.), we joined the International Women’s Anthropology Conference (IWAC) which held four workshops at the Forum, including one on “Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Women’s Labor: Producing and Reproducing,” at which we both spoke.

The Forum, which attracted more than 13,000 participants, compared to the 3000 delegates to the official conference, was a great free-wheeling mélange of several hundred NGOs, ranging from the Girl Guides Association, YWCA, and Housewives in Dialogue, to the Third World Movement Against the Exploitation of Women, the International Prostitutes Collective, the Greenbelt Movement, and the Feminist Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG).

Although we had made a tentative selection of workshops from the printed program, our procedure each morning was to crowd into the Education Building to note schedule changes posted on the walls as well as announcements of unscheduled events via posters, leaflets, flyers, and the daily FORUM 85, the invaluable tabloid produced during the night by the NGO news service. Having selected a workshop, actual arrival at any particular meeting was always problematic. The campus was a booby trap of tempting distractions. One’s attraction was drawn to women in enormous bright turbans and colorful African khangas, Indian saris, and Muslim chadors. There were also unexpected moments of mutual recognition of friends and acquaintances, unscheduled entertainments, and the lure of the outdoor settings of various organizations.

A thousand workshops had been scheduled for the Forum and 800 more were organized on the spot. The wide range of topics must have touched every aspect of women’s lives. At least 25 workshops dealt with the problems and status of women in various countries, but the only Eastern bloc nation represented was Afghanistan, whose Central Committee of the People’s Democratic Party held a workshop on “Afghan Women for Peace.” Only a few Soviet women attended the Forum and no workshop was sponsored by any organization in the USSR.

We found the city of Nairobi and the campus of its University, site of the NGO meetings, overflowing with women, so many in fact, that the Kenyan government ordered NGO women out of the first-class hotels in order to make room for the official delegates. This arbitrary action precipitated a minor crisis when, at one hotel, women gathered in the lobby sang “We Shall Not Be Moved,” and stretched out on the floor. The impasse was eventually solved by a compromise initiated by the women themselves. They refused the remote dormitory rooms offered by the government, but vacated the needed rooms by moving in with one another, three or four to a room. Although it was all settled peacefully, some women complained that they had been very badly treated by the Kenyan authorities when the police had rolled up their belongings in sheets and dumped them outside their rooms. We heard about two women who were assigned rooms in a brothel outside of Nairobi; that worked out well as the women took a professional view and used the experience as grist for their sociological mills.

Audrey chose to attend workshops on Violence Against Women, and came away encouraged by the groundswell of general awareness, mutual concern and support of women in different countries, and the burgeoning of activities being undertaken in all parts of the world for the protection and improvement of women’s lives. This exposure was also a valuable corrective to ethnocentrism as the extremes of injury and injustice endured by women in the Third World placed issues that concern women in the United States into a new perspective.

In the Third World, the problems of women are the grim, everyday hardships of extreme poverty and traditional male oppression that make women old before their time, that gradually destroy their health, and shorten their lives. Take, for example, the problem of getting water. Women carry water in jars on their heads; it is estimated that they spend one full day each week—12 to 15 hours—carrying water to their homes. Young girls are often kept home from school to help with this chore. There are also problems with water purification to remove the toxins contributed by the activities of the transnational corporations from the First World. Women and girls gather firewood, often walking five miles or more to collect it and then five miles back to their homes; this is another day out of each week. These problems of the increasing difficulty of getting water and firewood are interrelated with the larger problems of land use and deforestation, of the impact of policies of First World corporations on the economies and lifestyles of Third World people.

Other hardships of women’s lives are rooted in ancient traditions. A Kenyan MP was quoted as having said, in response to legislation introduced in 1979, “It is very African to teach women manners by beating them…If this legislation is passed, even slapping your wife is ruled out.” In some countries poor families sell their young daughters into prostitution. In India young brides are burned alive, and in many places in Africa and beyond “female circumcision” (genital mutilation) is still performed.

This latter practice was the topic of a workshop attended by Audrey that opened with congratulations to the organizers and thanks to the Kenyan government for their efforts to end ritual mutilation of females. Flyers were passed around depicting a terrified little girl pulling away from a menacing figure towering over her with knife in hand. A male delegate from the Union of African lawyers announced that, as representative of an organization with consultative status at the United Nations Conference, he would present to the Conference a resolution condemning the practices. The Secretary of the International Women of the Legal Profession emphasized that her group had become involved in response to requests from African women themselves. A Kenyan woman describes the long struggle to wake up her “African sisters,” apologizing for a meeting in 1980 when the African women had spurned the concern of Western women. At that time African women felt that these practices were their problem and they resented the intervention of outsiders. Today, however, even though the issue remains religiously and politically sensitive, and even though African women feel that they know best how to approach their own people on this topic, international support is appreciated. The need for such support was underscored by the response of the director of a large regional hospital in Kenya, a Doctor of Medicine, and, needless to say, male. Asked if these practices were still going on in Kenya, he replied that “circumcision” of girls was now forbidden by the President but that it is still done in the rural areas, adding as an afterthought, “…it’s to calm the ladies down a bit you know.”! As such practices are carried by immigrant women into England and France, organizational liaisons between concerned European women and those in Africa and the Middle East have emerged.

An Inter-African Committee has established national committees in ten African countries, calling upon governments to assist women’s organizations in their search for solutions. Also, the Afro-Arab International Conference on the Condition of Women, organized by the Arab Lawyers Union, called on governments to “find ways and means to abolish…practices which are detrimental to the health and condition of women.”

Looking at the violence against Third World women, one is tempted to suggest that the problems of American women pale by comparison—but that is not entirely true, for, although American women are certainly free of some of the more extreme forms of oppression, too many of them are raped and beaten and consigned to poverty. There is a continuum here that links the extremely poor and oppressed women of the Third World to the less poor and oppressed women in our own society. Indeed, it was this awareness of the common threads in women’s lives around the world that largely shaped the “Spirit of Nairobi,” the spirit of mutual acceptance and support.

In the workshops on Violence, women from Kenya, Cameroon, Mauritania, Indian, Spain, Norway, France, Peru, and elsewhere offered facts and figures about their countrywomen victimized by poverty and poor health and too much childbearing, who suffered from carrying heavy loads, who were malnourished, raped, beaten, subjected to genital mutilation, sold into prostitution, or murdered by their husbands. The mountains of evidence were overwhelming. But along with these terrible reports came, like fresh air, the news of women organizing, networking, helping, supporting, and teaching each other.

Women from Argentina, Greece, and the United States described work being done with women who have been raped, and discussed the problems of working with the police, lawyers, and health care professionals. Violence against women and the sexual molestation of children was clearly a worldwide problem. An Israeli woman who had started an organization, “No Violence Against Women,” urged the need to change attitudes, to change laws, to raise awareness of the extent and seriousness of these problems. A woman from Cameroon said that in her country men’s protest against women is rising, that no organizations for women have been established because authorization has been withheld by the government. She hoped that the international solidarity of women would help open the way for her countrywomen. In Morocco it was reported that women came to a Women’s Center with various problems, but never with complaints about their private lives. In serious cases of battering, a woman will not seek help from the Center, but turns to her family who will designate an older male relative to talk with the husband. If the family complains to the police, there may be a trial and a three months’ prison sentence for the offending husband. But men can repudiate their wives, and can use battering and the conflict with the wife’s family as grounds for divorce.

A Spanish woman described male dominance in Spain as cutting across all political ideologies and all professions. Despite protection of the law, survey data indicated severe maltreatment of women, as well as their silence about it. A recent study showed that although 50 wives had been killed by their husbands over the past two and a half years, there were no data on the punishment, if any, of those husbands, except in one case a man who had killed his wife was sentenced to six months in prison. In contrast, a woman who killed her husband, after many years of being beaten by him, was sentenced to 20 years!

In India there is a wide spectrum of organized women’s groups, including The All-India Anti-Dowry Movement, organized on June 20, 1981, the date on which an 18-year-old bride was burned alive by in-laws who had demanded more dowry. She was one of a growing number of “dowry victims” who receive no community help of any kind. When neighbors hear screams they close their shutters; police show no interest; and physicians are reluctant to get involved in a time-consuming court case. Even if a woman were to get to a hospital and survive, she would be unlikely to help an official investigation, for to return to her parents would be even worse. In 1983 some 690 cases of bride burnings were reported in New Delhi alone, an average of two cases each day, but it is a phenomenon not confined to any one caste or class nor to any single part of India. The Anti-Dowry Movement has fought dowry-death cases through the courts, held condolence meetings and rallies, organized anti-dowry seminars, workshops, and street plays, and staged demonstrations at marriage ceremonies and receptions where huge dowries have been given.

Indian women have also formed the “Action-Group Organization Fighting Against Atrocities Committed on Women,” dealing with such problems as wife-beating, murder, abetted suicide, bigamy, prostitution, early marriages, denial of maintenance, property rights, desertion, divorce, maltreatment, and the custody of children.

In sum, the vitality and seriousness of purpose of these meetings were unforgettable. Participants agreed that the anti-violence movement must provide channels of education and communication involving men as well as women, teaching boys that violence is stupid and girls that they can stand up for themselves. The goal is to change attitudes in order to prevent violence against women. An Israeli woman summed it up in her own way: “The problem of violence against women is universal and enormous; all else in feminism is a luxury. Violence must be the focus of our effort.”

The session in which we both participated was devoted to the Development theme of the Forum. Helen Safa (University of Florida) stressed the need for a fundamental redefinition of “work” to place proper value on women’s non-market production. Women predominate in subsistence agriculture, especially as men leave the household for wage labor. Third World women are also more involved in household production than other women, since they lack appliances and, even in urban areas, such basic amenities as electricity and running water. Census figures reveal a male bias in listing men as head of household even when women carry the major responsibility. Safa wants all work connected with the household included in the gross national product. She also elaborated the familiar notion that economic development is not always beneficial to women, pointing out that women’s labor participation in the 70s was primarily in the tertiary sector, while more recently it has been in the primary. This change represents not progress but de-skilling and fragmentation of jobs accompanied by male unemployment.

From her field work in India, Joan Mencher (Graduate Center, CUNY) provided a concrete illustration of technology’s disadvantaging women. In the village she studied women’s earnings constitute the mainstay of the household, while men’s are squandered in activities defining male status, such as drinking and gambling. Women’s traditional work is being replaced by mechanization—herbicides obviate weeding; rice mills pound the rice; weaving is done by machine—but, in the absence of alternative work, incomes are lowered and women lose.

Victoria Durant-Gonzalez (Georgia Institute of Technology) discussed the participation of women in the industrial process in Trinidad, Jamaica, and Barbados as affected by two forces: mechanization of women’s traditional work and the export orientation of industrialization strategy. When, in the late 1940s, the sugar industry became mechanized, women were forced out because of assumptions that they were incapable of learning new skills. A similar process occurred in Guyana when the government integrated small plots of land to permit the use of tractors, and women were compelled to return to service and domestic work.

The second force was the product of Third World countries’ desire for foreign currency and increased employment, and developed countries’ wish to cut labor costs by exporting labor-intensive jobs. The variability of result was shown in her contrast of the poor conditions of work instituted by Maidenform with the humanized workplace provided by Playtex. The solution, she said was not to ban multi-nationals, since women need the work, but for Third World governments to negotiate better conditions.

Anita Spring (University of Florida) described a project in Malawi in Central Africa from 1981-1983 which combined anthropological research and action in enhancing women’s agricultural roles in contrast to previous emphasis on “stitching and stirring.” The cookstoves they received in the past did not help weed nor harvest. An important aspect of the project was improved data collection, notably disaggregating work by sex to make women’s work visible and their needs and problems known. For example, women had not been given credit for stall feeding and other aspects of dairying. Women needed credit more than embroidery lessons. The researchers wanted to show that women are both interested in agriculture and capable of scientific reasoning. The emphasis was on changing behavior, not attitudes.

Leila Dude (University of Mysore) reported major themes from the conference on women and the household which was held in Delhi in 1984. (A pamphlet is available which summarizes the papers.) An interesting point was that women’s work opportunities were limited far more by management of their sexuality than by home and child care responsibilities. There was also the saying, “Man earns a cartful; women earns only a lapful.” Here again, women’s home production is regarded as leisure time and not valued.

The speaker from Uruguay discussed that the “putting out” of system which provided shoes, leather, dresses, textiles, and clothes for export. Women accept low pay out of economic necessity and an ideology of responsible motherhood. Home work, even under harsh conditions, was accepted as compatible with child care.

The discussion which ensued brought out variations in the connotation of motherhood by culture and social class. Thus Indian landowners see a conflict between motherhood and work, but farm workers do not. Children may be valued for their “humanizing” effect on women, providing a power base in later life, and winning the regard of husbands. In the Caribbean it is thought that old men who have never been social fathers are deservedly lonely.

Helen then reported on her decade of research on a cooperative community in Israel, which demonstrated the importance of ideology in maintaining sex inequality. Audrey spoke on sexual tourism, an industry whereby countries like the Philippines and Korea obtain foreign currency through the prostitution of their women to visiting businessmen from countries as Norway, Japan, Germany, and the United States.

There were no formal meetings on Saturday, July 13, but the Women’s Front of Norway held an informal discussion on the lawn, centering primarily on pornography. The Front, composed of 65 groups with 1200 members, was organized in 1973 to fight oppression on all fronts, and its militant methods seem to have been effective. Each of about a dozen women, mainly pink- and blue-collar workers, introduced herself and explained her role in this effort. Their strength was that they set priorities and planned actions against such practices as “last hired, first fired.” They took cases to local newspapers, collected money on the streets, hired lawyers, got cases into court, and achieved results. Other issues of concern to them were the six-hour working day, the elimination of pornography and prostitution, and abortion rights. As in some parts of the United States they have joined with anti-abortion religious groups in a common fight against pornography. The Front claimed they succeeded in getting a law passed making it criminal to degrade women, but an unofficial translation of the law on May 24, 1985, obtained from the Norwegian Information Service in New York…. [illegible] “…offensive or in other ways may seem degrading or brutalizing to human beings, including sexual descriptions involving children, animals, violence, force, and sadism.”

An Australian woman described how a video game, “Custer’s Revenge,” in which the winner gains access to an Indian woman tied to a stake, was removed from the Angus and Roberts Bookstore as a result of WAVE (Women Against Violence and Exploitation) action. Similarly, the Norwegians asserted that their demonstrations in front of grocery stores which carried pornographic publications effectively eliminated such materials. Helen dropped a discordant note into this discussion by suggesting that (1) pornography was hard to define, especially as distinguished from erotica; (2) censorship of pornographic materials might backfire and be used against feminist propaganda; (3) research has not established a link between pornography and rape (Donnerstein’s experiments notwithstanding) (4) pornography is more a symptom than a cause of male dominance; and (5) it is doubtful whether women’s appetite for pornography, including that of feminists, lesbians, or both, can be attributed entirely to traumas of socialization. Television camerapeople were present, but we have not seen ourselves on screen.

The discussion moved on to the struggles of Third World women. A Kenyan woman reported that a woman who walked alone at night in Nairobi risked arrest as a prostitute. Her name was Elizabeth Njoroge, there with her eight-year-old son Eliud and ten-year-old daughter Mary. While Elizabeth was speaking Helen took a picture of her traditional African garb, and her subsequent apology led to friendship with the family.

While the children were sent off with a few schillings for ice cream, Elizabeth took us to shops off the beaten tourist path to buy our Kenyan souvenirs, and facilitated our negotiations with shopkeepers who were mainly Indians. All carried items keyed to the Conference, including a red and green khanga imprinted with the official symbol of the United Nations Decade for Women combining the mathematical symbol of equality, the biological symbol for female, and the dove of peace and progress. A khanga is a boldly printed rectangular piece of cloth with a central motif and a theme expressed by a Swahili proverb. Audrey bought a book demonstrating 101 ways of wearing a khanga, exclusive of household décor. Among our treasured finds was an ebony circle to hold skewers, capped with a small carved animal, suitable for serving hors d’oeuvres.

After the shopping spree we picked up the children and queried them about their school likes and dislikes as we drove first to the Agha Khan Hospital, delightfully informal with its patient-decorated walls and garden spaces, then to a basket market where Elizabeth was greeted warmly by women vendors. (See photographs.) Here, using Helen’s camera, Eliud took surprisingly good pictures of us with our arms around Elizabeth and the basketmakers. Our visit was topped with the gift of a basket. (During our tour, at a moment when the children were out of earshot, Elizabeth recounted with greet glee and open admiration for his accuracy a school essay of Eliud’s in which he said that if he refused to eat after being beaten by his mother, she could beat him again.) Before we parted Elizabeth proudly showed us her office with its franking machine in a handsome building in the center of the town. She is responsible for incoming and outgoing mail [illegible].

The workshop on “Women in Islam,” sponsored by the General Federation of Jordanian women, had a male presider—a fact noted and objected to by a black American woman. Several Islamic women from Egypt and Jordan spoke, condemning Christianity and Judaism, praising Islam, and protesting they had full equality and opportunity to pursue careers as university professors. The double standard of sexual morality was defended as deriving from natural differences between the sexes. Helen got no answer to her question of what Muslim feminists were doing. None were present. She was told that everything bad in Islam, such as temporary wives, is confined to the Shiites.

In other workshops, though, it was reported that Islamic feminists confronted fundamentalists in matters ranging from the requirement of veiling to male monopoly of the interpretation of the Sharia, the 1300-year old Islamic code on which all Arab countries base their family law. Interpretations vary, however, from the very strict to the quite liberal. Tunisia is the only Arab country to see the Sharia as prohibiting polygyny.1

A prime attraction of the Forum was the International Women’s Filmforum presented at four locations in the vicinity. When meeting rooms were jammed to overflowing or nothing of high priority was going on, one could repair to one of the theaters for respite and refreshment. There was a small problem of censorship, however. We were disappointed on opening day at the Goethe Institute because the Kenyan government had not yet cleared the scheduled film, and later on a noisy demonstration protested the barring of a “Palestinian” film called “Laila and the Wolves.” (We wondered who could be the big bad wolf!) Among the films we especially enjoyed were “Don’t Call Me Girlie,” which recounted the participation of women directors and actresses in the Australian film industry in the 1900s. “No Virginity, No Nationality” revealed the shocking, if temporary, practice of physical examination of Indian girls by immigration officials at Heathrow Airport under the assumption that non-virgins might already be mothers likely to send for their children.

In “A Question of Silence” three Dutch women, strangers to each other, cooperate spontaneously in the murder of a male boutique owner who represents female oppression to them. Another Australian film “On Guard” demonstrated the organizational and athletic prowess of four women, unselfconsciously lesbian, in sabotaging a reproductive engineering laboratory. The Filmforum was an excellent source of classroom materials. Helen was pleased to learn of Behind the Veil, a Canadian study of nuns, for her course “Men’s Rites, Women’s Rights: Sociological and Feminist Perspectives on Religion.”

Another resource of the Forum was the plentitude of books and materials from all over the world available at tables set up on the campus lawn, at the University bookstore, and distributed at the workshops. Handouts from the Japanese women’s groups were especially informative and esthetic. And, as previously mentioned, the Forum women also published a daily paper, FORUM 85, which carried news of the activities of each day, and reactions to them.

Our organization of these remarks has been more chronological than topical. But we do want to underscore what has been called the “spirit of Nairobi”—the mood of collaboration and active listening prevalent among the 13,000 women in attendance from all regions of the world. Complete harmony was by no means attained. PLO women tried to disrupt many workshops on topics quite unrelated to their message. There were heated exchanges between Soviet and American women, and conflict concerning Iran and Iraq, apartheid, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Central America, but the spirit of sisterhood and mutual learning triumphed, in contrast to the previous conferences in Mexico City (1975) and Copenhagen (1980).

In most of the workshops the spirit of not letting politics divide women prevailed. Disrupters were silenced, especially by African participants. It was somewhat disappointing, however, that in some workshops women had nothing to say about their experiences as women. For example, indigenous women from Australia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Mexico were concerned only with indigenous rights—the problems these women have with other women’s men. They denied any separate women’s issues. Australian aborigines spoke only of their rights to mining royalties, protection of their sacred sites, retention of their land, and preservation of their way of life.

The definition of “women’s issues” was a difficult problem for the NGO Forum to resolve. On the one hand there was he need to resist the “kitchenization” of women’s issues as separate from the political and the economic. Obviously, nothing human is alien to women, and their input on policies dealing with militarism, colonialism, poverty, technology, conservation, apartheid, refugee status, and other issues is urgently needed. At the same time it must be recognized that such social conditions may affect women differently from men—indeed that women may be the greater sufferers. On the other hand, the term “political” is used narrowly to refer to ideological grandstanding motivated more by nationalistic rivalries than concern for women’s welfare. A delegate from Trinidad and Tobago, however, commented that while economic, social, and political issues were relevant to women, “we have to be careful not to repeat the debates which are going on in other fora. We should at all times focus upon how things impact women and the kind of contributions women can make to political, social, and economic development. We cannot lose sight of that.” Similarly, Dame Nita Barrow of Barbados, the forum’s convener, suggested that “women have begun to see that they may not be used for others’ political purposes, and they realize they can get together to discuss their own issues and solve their own problems.” Paradoxically, the attempt to avoid being manipulated by male politicians may itself be viewed as taking a political stand.

The tensions surrounding this question can be highlighted by considering the differential emphasis placed on the three main goals of the Decade—equality, development, and peace. According to Dr. Lucille Mair’s address on the last day of the Forum, at the initial U.N. Conference in Mexico City Western feminists were primarily concerned with equality, while Third World women (whose unpaid work hardly generated an interest in equal pay) put development first, calling for a New International Economic Order which would overcome forms of inequality other than sex. Completing the triangle, Eastern bloc women felt peace was prerequisite to any progress. The second U.N. Conference in Copenhagen marked the beginning of more dialogue among these three groups, but the three goals were not seen as inextricably linked until the Nairobi meeting. Post-colonial development policies not only have tended to exclude women’s participation but have often exacerbated gender inequities. Export-oriented production has led to crises of food, water, and fuel in which women are the hardest hit, yet their role is central in overcoming these crises and in fostering economic development in Third World countries. And, of course, while militarization and the arms race drain off resources, development is slowed. Peace, therefore, is prerequisite to both development and equality, whether between nations, classes, genders, or ethnic groups. The “forward-looking strategies” documented called for the equal participation of women in negotiations on international peace and security.

Indeed, the unanimous adoption of this document (Forward-Looking Strategies of the Implementation for the Advancement of Women and Concrete Measures to Overcome Obstacles to the Achievement of the U.S. Decade for Women) by the Nairobi Conference, once the infamous “Zionism is racism” equation was withdrawn and the word “single” substituted for “unwed” in a clause supporting the rights of mothers, demonstrated the superiority of feminine over masculine negotiating skills.

We came away with the impression that the Nairobi Conference had many positive effects. First, it confirmed the worldwide oppressive condition of women for all the world to see. Second, it showed that the women’s movement was far from spent, although its main impetus may have shifted to Third World countries. In contrast to Mexico City and Copenhagen, white Western women were far less prominent at Nairobi. Greatly increased in number were women of color, not only African but also women from the Middle East and Asia, indigenous women from Australia and Latin America, and Afro-American women from the United States and the Caribbean. The Decade has witnessed the growth of feminist consciousness among Third World women generally. Feminism is no longer regarded as hopelessly tainted with Western colonialism and imperialism. African women no longer defended “female circumcision” as a traditional practice not to be criticized by snooping Westerners. There was overwhelming concern for family planning and reproductive freedom. Third World women seem to have realized that overthrowing capitalism and imperialism will not solve all their problems as women, and that specific strategies for combatting gender subordination have to be devised. Notwithstanding the considerable diversity of issues and arenas of struggle, certain common problems emerged: how to prevent unwanted pregnancy, how to combine work with children, the need for education, whether it be higher education or simple literacy, how to deal with domestic violence, the importance of women’s representation in political bodies, how to organize women for collective action, how to train women for leadership, and so on.

Although all was not sweetness and light, one did get a sense of commitment to the building of an international women’s movement that could bypass old ideological cleavages and permit women to “think globally and act locally.” The Forum marked a giant step toward women’s self-empowerment.

Notes

1 Editors’ note: Approximately one page is missing from this section of the original manuscript.

Women and Religion in Islam

Helen M. Hacker Previously unpublished

Somewhat similar to their Western counterparts, Middle Eastern Muslim feminists are confronted by an oppressive, patriarchal religious tradition. Every Muslim is required to declare before witnesses, “I testify that there is no God but the one God, and Muhammad is his prophet.” The Quran consists of the messages and commandments of this male God as revealed to his male prophet, and is addressed to men. They are admonished on the proper treatment of women as wives and mothers. Only to them is vouchsafed a vision of Paradise in blissful detail, while Hell’s torments for women are graphically depicted. Muslim jurists who act as interpreters of the Shariah or Holy Law through their exercise of ijtinad are men, as is the imam or leader of the congregation in prayer. Only a man can be a Khalifah or successor to the Prophet. If not in the Suras or verses of the Quran, then in later religious outlook women are seen as repositories of dangerous sexual powers. Their potential disruptiveness justifies male domination.

Islam is a religion of law. The word itself means submission or commitment to divine guidance broadly expressed in the Shariah, a word meaning pathway or roadway. The Shariah established a religious social community or ummah. This Holy Law is comprehensive in that it touches every sphere of life, including matters that Westerners might consider outside the purview of law, such as dress, foodstuffs, forms of greeting, and courtesy. The Quran is brief and frequently unclear, so it became necessary to derive specific rules from the broad principles of the transcendental Shariah to apply to the multitude of problems and situations for which the Quran had no specific provisions, and also to find additional sources of authority. These are found first of all in the Sunnah or customary usage of the Prophet, consisting of reports that the Prophet had acted or judged matters in a particular way. Islamic mentality looks to the past as a storehouse of valid and normative guidance. The content of the Prophet’s Sunnah is known through oral reports called Hadith, which consists of two parts: the text and the “foundation” or chain of authorities through which it has come down. When Muslims confronted a difficulty or a novel situation, they searched for a report which would supply guidance by way of a precedent. If the Prophet had not said or done anything relevant to the situation, reports were fabricated. Today scholars are busy authenticating Hadith, separating wheat from chaff, not by criticism of the text but of the transmission process. After the Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet, the third source of legal guidance is the consensus or ijma of the community. Alshafi, a widely accepted jurist of the third century, held that his consensus is always that of past generations, whereas modernist Muslims take it to be a power of legislation given to the contemporary community. The last of the roots of the law—and a court of last resort—is givas or analogical reasoning, used to extend the implications of an explicit rule of law arrived at on the basis of one of the preceding usul or sources. For instance, the Quranic prohibition of wine on the basis of its being an intoxicant would lead to the judgment that other intoxicants are also to be forbidden.

The process of striving to understand the sources of the law and to derive the rules of law from them is called by the technical term ijtihad, meaning to make a personal intellectual effort. Controversy exists today as to whether the “Door of Ijtihad” has closed, legitimating study only of the commentaries on the sources as opposed to the study and possible reinterpretation of the sources themselves. For modernists Islam is dynamic and progressive, incorporating in such principles as ijtihad the means for its own perpetual self-regeneration and self-adaptation to new circumstances. It is this view which those feminists take who seek to reconstruct Islamic tradition to uphold the rights of women. This task is especially imperative in view of the fact that it is in the sphere of the family and personal law that the Islamic fight or jurisprudence continues to have great influence in many Muslim states.

Let me now enumerate the traditional debilities visited upon women. Women are subject to Islamic law in all Muslim countries except Turkey and Tunisia. It involves:

Legal and religious endorsement of patriarchy and polygamy.

Unilateral power of the husband in divorce.

Custody rights go to the husband in divorce.

Husband has the right to restrict a rebellious wife to the conjugal home, and chastise her physically if she is disobedient or refuses intercourse.

Females have unequal rights in inheritance.

Unequal weight is given to women’s legal testimony in court, that is, the witness of a man is equivalent to that of two women.

Overall, the requirement that women should be chaste and modest and reserve themselves completely for their husbands has led to various kinds of segregation: veiling, the seclusion of the harem, exclusion from many activities that involve men—most importantly, prohibition against working with male strangers, and a general dependence on men. Men control women to preserve family “honor” and are economically responsible for them, regardless of the woman’s marital status. So women lacked the stimuli to cultivate independence and self-reliance and found satisfactions and rewards in their world of the family. We see here an interplay between voluntary seclusion and exclusion from public life. Youssef predicts that the strongest factor in changing the status of women is the growing acceptance of women’s right to equal educational opportunities. Also, economic pressures make it difficult for kinsmen to support unmarried, especially divorced, women.

In a previous paper I suggested three possible feminist responses to the denigration of women in the Judeo-Christian tradition: (1) rejection, (2) revolution, and (3) reconstruction. Only the first and the last represent positions that have been taken by Muslim women in regard to Islam. While some Muslim women, like Fatima Mernissi in Beyond the Veil, believe that no fundamental change can be effected within the Islamic tradition,1 none to my knowledge have advocated reviving forms of worship from the pre-Islamic past, to neo-paganism. The main thrust of Muslim feminist scholars is to modify or reinterpret Islamic tradition to reveal its basic equalitarianism. This hermeneutic quest can take two forms. One approach, which may be called literal or absolutist, seeks to establish the authentic Quranic texts which presumably have been traduced or eroded in false Hadith and patriarchal hegemony over the religious consensus and methods of inference and analogy. A second, relativistic approach takes the Suras as relative to their times and thus constantly in need of or susceptible to reinterpretation to fit contemporary needs. They go by the spirit rather than the letter of the Prophet’s revelation.

I would like to illustrate these two approaches in regard to two aspects of Islam, ideological and material, that is, the religious conception of women and the laws affecting the treatment of women which flow from this view. The Islamic image of woman may be inferred from the portrayal of Eve. According to Jane Smith and Yvonne Haddad, the image of Eve became altered in Islamic tradition from the picture presented in the Quran which in no way justifies the conception of women as lesser or inferior beings. First in scripture there is no word of Eve’s having come from any part of Adam, but in later reports one finds frequent references to Eve as having been created out of the side of Adam, or from his bone, often described as crooked. All well and good, but does it help that there is no reference to Eve’s creation at all, though creation there must have been, since she was invited into the Garden with Adam, in accordance with the Quranic command “Dwell with your wife in the Garden.” The authors, however, take it to mean that “we are all of one spirit…rejecting the notion that woman’s humanity is any less than that of man.” Second, in regard to the Fall, both Adam and his wife are warned not to eat off the tree of immortality (2:35, 7:19), Satan tempts them both and causes them to falter (2:36, 7:20, although in 2:120 Adam alone is tempted), and both eat off the tree and see their own nakedness (2:122) and both are expelled from the Garden. Thus, though it may be true that Eve was not responsible for tempting Adam, she seems of less importance than in the Genesis II account, and even if she was not made from a crooked bone, Eve was still created for Adam’s rest. There is, however, no other indication of her inferiority.

Also representative of feminists who hold that the true or authentic Islam is egalitarian and make a distinction between Islam and Islamic tradition and culture is Azizah al-Hibri, who was guest editor of a special issue on Women and Islam of the Women’s Studies International Forum. According to her—and I quote:

“Patriarchy co-opted Islam after the death of the prophet. This meant, among other things, that many passages in the Quran were interpreted loosely, and out of context, in support of a vicious patriarchal ideology. These interpretations were then handed down to women as God’s revealed words. Also, the Arabic language is a very rich language, and thus it is not uncommon to run into sentences that can be interpreted in a variety of ways.”

Today, as feminist activity asserts itself in the Islamic sphere, we find ourselves reexamining these old patriarchal interpretations and shaking them at the root. Muslim feminists should be guided by the fact that there is no clergy in Islam, each person being responsible directly to God for her own beliefs. She herself points the way in attacking three problem areas: polygamy, divorce, and the supremacy of men over women.

1. Polygamy

The Quran IV, verse 3 says “Marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if ye fear that you shall not deal justly (with them), then only one….” Lest men be foolhardy enough to think that they can deal justly with four wives—and according to tradition, men had only to satisfy their own consciences in this regard—verse 129 admonishes “Ye are never able to be fair and just among women, even if you tried hard.” Put these two passages together and the clear implication is that only one wife is permitted. But one may ask, if this is what Allah intended, why didn’t he just come out and say so? Perhaps because Muhammad needed to appease contemporary tribal leaders accustomed to polygamy and thus did not want to outlaw it summarily. (Zein ED-DIN…“it was out of God’s wisdom to eliminate some of these reprehensible customs, while leaving traces of them to turn men’s attention to Him so they would not give up His religion and abandon His Prophet.”)

2. Divorce

Suras II and the amendments in IV seemingly give men a unilateral power of divorce, addressing men “who forswear their wives” and “women who are divorced.” Al-Hibri maintains, however, that marriage in Islam is a contract, and that the bride can include any conditions she desires, such as an automatic divorce if the husband takes another wife—or if he disobeys her in one instance she mentions.

3. Supremacy of men over women

This view is supported mainly by verse 34, Sura IV which is translated by A. Yusef Ali (1946. The Holy Quran: Text, Translation, and Commentary) “Men are the protectors and maintainers of women [the Picthall translation has it, “Men are in charge of women”] because God has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient and guard in (the husband’s) absence what God would have them guard. As to those women from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and boycott their beds and beat them. If they obey you, do not seek a way against them. God is high and exalted.” This verse lends itself to the interpretation that man is in charge of the woman, that the wife must obey her husband, and that the husband has the right to discipline his wife.

But al-Hibri challenges this interpretation as erroneous. Her translation runs, “Men are ‘qawwamun’ over women in matters where God gave some of them more than others, and in what they spend of their money.” She says the word “qawwamun” is difficult to translate. “Protectors” and “maintainers” is not quite accurate.

The basic notion involved here is one of moral guidance and caring. Moreover, men are not put in charge of women’s affairs because they are created superior to women, since, first of all, nowhere in the passage is there a reference to the male’s physical or intellectual superiority but rather it states a contingency—only if he is better versed than she in the matter. For example, in making a business decision, a wife may find that her knowledge of the market place is inferior to that of her husband’s, so he may have ‘qawwam’ over her in this matter, i.e., guiding her and protecting her interests with full knowledge that the final decision is hers alone. And then the second condition must be fulfilled that he supports her financially. According to al-Hibri’s interpretation, no one has the right to counsel a self-supporting woman. She also calls attention to the phrase “some of them” as indicating clearly that men as a class are not “qawwamun” over women as a class.

To wrap it up, she shows that the traditional interpretation is inconsistent with other Islamic teachings. Elsewhere in the Quran we have the following passage: “The believers, men and women, are ‘awliya,’ one of another” (IX, verse 71). “Awliya” means “protectors,” “in charge,” “guides.” It is quite similar to “qawwamun.” How could women be “Awliya” of men if men are superior to women in both physical and intellectual strength? How could women be in charge of men who have absolute authority over their lives? This passage clearly places male and female on equal footing. The peroration is reminiscent of St. Paul. The Prophet is quoted as saying: “All people are equal, as equal as the teeth of a comb. There is no claim of merit of an Arab over a non-Arab, or of a white over a black person or of a male over a female. Only God-fearing people merit a preference with God.”

An alternative strategy for those who believe that the message of true Islam is egalitarian is to seek the spirit of the Quran when the letter is inadequate or absent. These feminists contend that Muhammad sought to elevate women above their status in seventh century Arabia, and buttress their stand by contrasting the rights given to women in the Quran with deplorable conditions in the age of “Jahiliyyah” or ignorance. According to Azizah al-Hibri, the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula was “viciously patriarchal.” They practiced female infanticide, polygymy with as many as 100 wives, did not allow women to inherit, and even forced daughters into prostitution. In this context Islam can be viewed as defending the rights of women in limiting men to four wives, giving women a share in the inheritance, even if unequal, accepting women’s legal testimony in court even at half the weight of a man’s, making female infanticide a crime against God, and killing women a crime equal to that of killing men, exhorting men to honor their mothers, etc. And its provisions compare favorably with European law until modern times. Azizah al-Hibri lists fourteen reforms that Islam accomplished, but overriding these in importance is the religious community which it established to replace the tribal power structure based on patrilineage which had no place for individual rights. In contrast to the “paternal bond” of Jahiliyyah in the religious bond of Islam everyone—regardless of sex, age, race, or social class—is equal. But in view of the hostile milieu in which Islam arose the Prophet had to make compromises to assure the growth of the new religion, much as St. Paul in Mary Daly’s early argument had to protect the early Christian Church against scandal. The fact that certain parts of the Quran were superseded by later injunctions when the time was ripe for them indicates Islam’s adaptability to social and historical change. Within the limitations imposed by the social climate the prophet did his best for women. For example, while he could not abrogate punishment for female adultery, he did make it almost impossible to prove. While some writers such as Nada Youssef say the husband has the unilateral power of divorce, al-Hibri, as we have seen, asserts that divorce was made “extremely easy” for both male and female. Nawal el Saadawi (1982) concurs that “Prophet Muhamad was more emancipated with respect to women than most men of his time, and even most Muslim men nowadays. He gave his women the right to stand up to him, rebuke him, or tell him where he had gone wrong.” She, however, attributes “the greater recognition accorded by the Prophet and early Islam to the rights of women” to the continuation of their pre-Islamic position, gradually lost as patriarchy took over Islam. Al-Hibri also discusses a “matriarchal” stage which was undone by a male monopoly of weaponry imported from surrounding patriarchal societies “under Byzantine and Persian influence”—so that like latter-day imperialists they preferred to impart their technological know-how to males rather than females. Whether the Prophet was continuing a tradition of female independence and power or seeking to inaugurate one does not contest his own progressive policy. (It is interesting to note that Muslim feminists, unlike some of their western counterparts, have not sought to revivify a presumed pre-Quranic past of goddesses and matriarchy.)

Extrapolation from the Quran to make Islam responsive to contemporary needs and experiences of women is not required in many areas for which the relevant passages are susceptible to conflicting interpretations. Here the problem is one of judicious selection. For example, women’s right to work may be supported by the quotation, “Men have the right to what they can earn by their efforts, and women have the right to what they earn also.” Those who would confine women to their homes are fond of quoting, “Settle down in your homes and do not make up as did the women of early Jahiliya times.” Even this verse would seem to permit an unadorned woman to leave her house for a good reason, and indeed the majority of Arab women work full-time in the fields, shops, and factories. Similarly, although the Quran says nothing specifically about contraception or abortion, the tradition is one of opposition predicated on the verse, “Do not kill your children for fear of heresy,” and “Your God provides generously for whom he desires, for He is all powerful.” Supporters of birth control further their views with the verse, “Allah wishes to ease your burdens not to make things more difficult.” Needless to say, Islam is not the sole or even the main cause of the problems faced by contemporary Muslim women, but the pervasive character of religious law exacerbates the effects of underdevelopment and foreign exploitation of resources, poverty, and feudal and capitalist class structures. An important obstacle in modernizing tradition is the association of feminism with colonialism and the nationalist appeal to women to uphold Islam and guard its traditions in opposing the imperialist oppressor. There is an inherent tension, if not contradiction, in this position. Patriotism cannot call women to participate in social reconstruction if they must be protected from contact with men. In fact, the departure of foreign women and minorities from clerical and factory jobs has presented new opportunities to Muslim women.

Although in Muhammad’s time women may have prayed in mosques and enjoyed religious equality with men, they were subsequently exempt from many duties (only men served as imams in the mosques and gadis in the courts), pilgrimages, holy wars, and religious prophecy. Women, however, developed their own form of religiosity, cults of saints, and Sufism. There is a danger that modern reform movements which emphasize “the blending of rational interpretations with traditionally acceptable understandings” may masculinize Islam “by moving away from emotional elements of folk religion.” Jane Smith (1980) raises the question: “Do the very movements that would appear to bring with them an improvement in the situation of women in fact signal a circumstance in which those kinds of religious practices apparently most congenial to women have the least likelihood of survival? Or is it necessary to assume that the reason why those particular practices and beliefs have lent themselves most easily to women is simply because women have been excluded from other areas of religious practice, a situation that might actually be changing?”

Sufism opened more avenues of life to women than orthodox Islam. In Turkey, women were members of dervish orders, participating in all parts of the ritual. Daisy Hilse Dwyer has provided a fascinating account of women’s Sufism in Morocco. Not only are female saints venerated, but women play an important role in this mystical complex. They organize the one-day local festivities in honor of saints, and hold positions as curers and muqaddamat (leaders and caretakers). On the basis of their own needs women made affiliatory decisions for themselves, frequently their husbands, and their children. Geographic accessibility, previous ties with the saint, the kind of protection needed, the kind and extent of observances required by the saint, and the saint’s reputation for jealousy are among the factors influencing women’s affiliations.

We have yet to consider those who take the position that Islam is incompatible with feminism. In her introduction to Beyond the Veil, Mernissi writes…”there is a fundamental contradiction between Islam as interpreted in official policy and equality of the sexes. Sexual equality violated Islam’s premise, actualized in its laws, that the heterosexual love is dangerous to Allah’s order. Muslim marriage is based on male dominance. The desegregation of the sexes violated Islam’s ideology on the woman’s position in the social order: the woman should be under the authority of fathers, brothers, or husbands. Since she is considered by Allah to be a destructive element, she is to be spatially confined and excluded from matters other than those of the family. The woman’s access to non-domestic space is put under the control of males.

Paradoxically and contrary to what is commonly assumed, Islam does not advance the thesis of women’s inherent inferiority. Quite the contrary, it affirms the potential equality between the sexes “…the democratic glorification of the human individual, regardless of sex, race, or status, is the kernel of the Muslim message.” Thus, contrary to Christianity, Islam promulgates an ideology of female strength, if not superiority, and justifies their subordination as preservative of the social order.

In conclusion, the question may be raised of the consequences of pro-woman interpretations of the Quran. Although they may not directly impinge upon social structure, they do make it possible for Muslims to support new freedoms for women if they so choose, just as traditional interpretations served to support male supremacy. These new interpretations can be important weapons in the propaganda war with Muslim fundamentalists, turning the credo of “Honor the text” against them, much as Phyllis Trible is doing with southern Baptists, which seems to be raising purely religious demands paralleling Western struggles for ordination, since Islam lacks a priesthood. It may be anticipated, however, that if Muslim women are looked to as the guardians of tradition, they will seek full religious, as well as secular, participation.

Notes

1 Simin Royanian, an Iranian scholar and panelist at a conference on “Women in Muslim Societies” at Brooklyn College last April said that only those who idealize Islam can believe that it could free women.

V. Helen M. Hacker: Critic and Provocateur

I went to C. Wright Mills and said I am having such trouble writing my dissertation, writing an introduction, writing the first chapter, and he said “Helen, go home and drink a bottle of wine, and then sit down with your typewriter.” That’s C. Wright Mills.

In her autobiographical essay (included above), Helen described her vita as “eclectic as well as hectic.” She wrote countless op-eds, always eager and more than willing to demonstrate the value of a well-honed sociological imagination: “I’ve written so many letters to Newsweek and The New Yorker, I recently wrote my solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Although the majority of her scholarship is situated at the intersections of gender and the fields described in the preceding sections, this final section showcases Dr. Hacker’s diverse research interests and her ability to go toe-to-toe with leading academics, regardless of their discipline or rank. As her family takes care to remind us, Aunt Helen’s motto was, “why be difficult, when you can be impossible!?”

Her influences (most notably Nietzsche, Veblen, and Proust) spanned sociology, philosophy, economics, and numerous other disciplines, and her writing reflects her well-roundedness as a scholar and intellectual. For example, when Helen was unable to obtain an academic job after Columbia (“women in their forties and lacking a male patron were not hired as Assistant Professors, or even instructors”), she accepted a job in the New York City Department of Health conducting accident research. She published an article on the topic in Social Problems in 1963, although we were not able to obtain the copyright to include this theoretical essay here. Helen was skilled at presenting topics that are currently studied and drawing on social theory to propose new directions for future research, a theme that permeates through the five publications included below.

First, are two letters to the editor of the discipline’s leading journal, American Journal of Sociology (AJS). Highlighting her desire to study the unknown, Helen’s 1948 piece explains that scholars have examined a number of subcultures, but one that would be especially revealing (albeit difficult) to investigate is “extra-legal, secret, international organizations, as exemplified in a narcotics smuggling ring.” Written just a few short years after the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, Hacker offers four hypotheses for future researchers to test, arguing that this type of project is necessary “in an age when the political institutions of cabinets, parties, and parliaments are eclipsed by the monstrous forms of terror.”

The second letter to the editor is a critique of Arnold Rose’s 1950 AJS article, “A Deductive Ideal-Type Method.” We discussed this scholarly exchange with Helen, who recalled, “I said that structural functionalism was an elaborate tautology…Well, I haven’t changed my mind.” Helen was always willing to engage with and critique dominant forms of thought. Then in her mid-90s, we told Helen that we were impressed by her willingness to critique established theories, especially given that she had yet to earn her doctorate. Helen’s reply perfectly captured her feisty attitude and passion for intellectual debate: “Why!? What have I got to lose?!…I didn’t think what I was saying was an act of courage at all. Speaking truth to power, these were pretty powerless people anyway, sociologists are.”

In “Marx, Weber, and Pareto on the Changing Status of Women,” an article she published in the journal Phylon, Hacker again demonstrates her willingness to critically engage with central disciplinary ideas. This time she returns to the work of three foundational theorists of social change--Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Vilfredo Pareto--with a particular eye to how they may help us understand the role of women in modern society. In doing so reveals key limitations and silences in each of their respective work and repeatedly demonstrates how the lack of engagement with women undercuts their potential to make universal claims. As always, Hacker does not shy away from difficult questions about the role of the researcher--contrasting Marx and his willingness to write for social change with the more value-neutral duo of Weber and Pareto.

“The Ishmael Complex,” published in the American Journal of Psychotherapy, began as a course paper for renowned sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld at Columbia University. Critical of Sigmund Freud’s “oedipus complex,” Hacker offered an alternative developmental pattern where children attach with “a combined maternal-paternal image in which the desired qualities of both parents are preserved, and their deficiencies eliminated.” In support of the “Ishmael complex,” Hacker borrows from Leslie Fiedler’s (1948) analysis in Partisan Review, a literary magazine whose ties to the Communist Party and covert CIA funding is worth a visit to their Wikipedia page. Hacker argues that the Ishmael complex explains the “chaste and pure” relationships between white boys and older black men in the remote and isolated settings of classic novels such as Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick. Typical of her writing, Hacker emphasizes the significance of social class and race, hypothesizing why the Ishmael complex is especially strong among middle class boys and how racial stereotypes allow the black characters in these novels to embrace both paternal (e.g., protector in a strange and perilous world) and maternal (e.g., tender, affectionate) roles.

After careful thought, we decided to preserve Hacker’s original language in all of her writing. This includes “Ishmael Complex,” which, as readers will see, utilizes antiquated racial terminology. Debates about racism and censorship are ongoing, especially as it relates to Mark Twain’s 1885 novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (one of the primary issues here). Our goal in this project is to share Hacker’s scholarship, not update it to reflect contemporary understandings of gender, sexuality, or race. We hope we do Hacker’s writing justice with this decision, but also want to warn readers to expect offensive language in this piece.

We leave readers with an article on clergymen and hippies that on the surface is quite removed from Helen’s other scholarship, although it should be noted that Helen proposed a dissertation on the experiences of women Protestant ministers (“Petticoats in the Pulpit”) that was shot down by Robert Merton. The findings from “How Clergymen View Hippiedom” are based on a questionnaire that her research methods class at Adelphi University mailed to every clergyman in Nassau and Suffolk counties, New York (just over one-third responded). Their results suggest that clergymen, on average, view hippies “largely as middle-class delinquents,” but that views vary based on characteristics like age, length of time in the clergy, and congregation size. Some sympathized with the movement, seeing it as a corrective to “the puritanic hangups of traditional pietism that was neither Christian nor pious to begin with. It is a call to reawakening, evaluating, perhaps restructuring worn-out clichés and structures.” We suspect that Helen would agree.

Section Contents

Helen M. Hacker. 1948. “Secret Societies.” American Journal of Sociology 54: 156-158.

Helen M. Hacker. 1951. “Arnold Rose’s ‘A Deductive Ideal-Type Method.’” American Journal of Sociology 56: 354-356.

Helen M. Hacker. 1953. “Marx, Weber and Pareto on the Changing Status of Women.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 12(2): 149-162.

Helen M. Hacker. 1952. “The Ishmael Complex.” American Journal of Psychotherapy 1(3): 494-512.

Helen M. Hacker. 1970. “How Clergymen View Hippiedom.” The Christian Century July 22, 1970: 887-891.

References

Fiedler, Leslie. 1948. “Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey!” Partisan Review 15: 664-671.

Twain, Mark. 1885. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York, NY: Charles L. Webster & Co.

Secret Societies

Helen M. Hacker Originally published 1948

To the Editor:

The media of popular culture often suggest hypotheses to amateur and professional students of cultures. Seeing the film To the Ends of the Earth last night stimulated me to some thoughts which may be of interest to the readers of the Journal. There have been numerous analyses of the codes of conduct of such subcultures as the underworld, the slum, the college campus, the middle class, penal institutions, the concentration camp, etc.; but one rich field of sociological research has remained relatively unexplored—the social norms of extra-legal, secret, international organizations, as exemplified in a narcotics smuggling ring, the Russian secret police (M.G.B.), and various nationalist organizations operating on a worldwide scale.

The difficulties in obtaining direct access to the files of such organizations are, of course, tremendous—with the possible exceptions of narcotics and white-slavery organizations. The “participant-observer” technique may appear a trifle dangerous for research in this area, but such risks would not be required in garnering empirical data on those international organizations which history has and may render defunct. The deficiency in authentic source material, however, is made up in part by the wealth of individual testimony and fictionalized accounts. Such works as Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes, Humphrey Slater’s two novels, The Heretics and The Conspirators, Mark Aldanov’s The Fifth Seal, Ignazio Silone’s School for Dictators, Jan Valtin’s Out of the Night, Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, Kravchenko’s I Chose Freedom, and countless others provide ample clues for scientific documentation.

From these latter sources several principles regulating the behavior of members of secret organizations seem tentatively to emerge. I have selected four such principles, which may serve as hypotheses for direct testing:

1. The only “morality” operative in such an organization is the perpetuation of the organization itself. In contrast to the classical literature of ethics which stresses the universality of ethical concepts, the standards of behavior sanctioned by the secret, international organization apply only to its own limited membership. With regard to its own internal rules of operation such an organization is properly termed “amoral.” In some cases observance of the code is confined to the top leadership and is neither made known to nor applied to the rank and file or the periphery. Lionel Trilling in his The Middle of the Journey portrays the “innocence” and later disillusionment of a fellow-traveler.

It goes without saying that such organizations have first and irrevocable claim on the loyalty of their personnel. All “other-group” roles are ruthlessly subordinated to the requirements of the primary role. An espionage agent must not hesitate to kill his wife (The Conspirators); likewise an engineer turned opium smuggler (To the Ends of the Earth).

2. Once a person has participated actively in such an organization, he may not leave, on penalty of death. Witness the son in Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock, who was killed by the I.R.A. when he attempted to dissociate himself from the movement.

3. Any member who fails in a mission must either commit suicide or be put to death. In the film mentioned above three members of the narcotics gang kill themselves when their role in the organization is discovered by the federal agent. Berthold Brecht in his “didactic” poem Die Maẞnahme sings that a young comrade was shot and thrown into a lime pit for his failures in China. It was “for communism” that he was made to disappear totally.

4. Even if a member has not sought to desert or failed in a mission, he may be liquidated in the interests of the organization. In his novel The Heretics Humphrey Slater recounts the selling into slavery of the young friars along with the children whom they accompanied on the Children’s Crusade. Similarly, a character (Shannon) in To the Ends of the Earth is stabbed and cast into the sea to throw the federal agent off the scent of the larger activities of the gang.

It is frequently the case that perfervid loyalty may be rewarded with martyrdom. Internal scapegoats may be tagged with the responsibility for mistaken policies to absolve the top leadership. In The Heretics Colonel Cordova rightly suspects that his unsought promotion is a device to make him the whipping-boy for the failure of the assault on Madrid.

The above “principles” represent only a hasty and impressionistic sampling of the literature (and life). Many more generalizations can be uncovered and tested, and surely this is not an unimportant task for sociologists in an age when the political institutions of cabinets, parties, and parliaments are eclipsed by the monstrous forms of terror, the secret police, and the concentration camp.

Arnold Rose’s “A Deductive Ideal-Type Method”

Helen M. Hacker Originally published 1951

To the Editor:

In the July, 1950, issue of the American Journal of Sociology Arnold M. Rose proposes in “A Deductive Ideal-Type Method” that sociologists endeavor to apply to the phenomena of their discipline the deductive method, which has proved so rewarding in theoretical economics. This deductive method, in his definition, consists in formulating significant tautologies involving “a few basic and manipulable variables” within the limits of assumptions based on observation. From such tautologies or truisms, logical deductions may be made which have predictive value. Dr. Rose then cites the equation of exchange as an example in economics of the empirical fruitfulness of a “practical truism.” Standing in the way of the utilization of the deductive method in sociology, he further states, are the twin difficulties that sociologists are agreed as to neither their subject matter nor the basic unit of their science. Nevertheless, he proceeds to supply five sociological examples of truistic propositions which have important empirical implications.

The purpose of these comments is to criticize neither Dr. Rose’s proposal nor his illustrations but to suggest that the employment of deductive ideal types is by no means absent from the history of sociological thinking, though perhaps not always linked to relevant, verifiable assumptions, and that a recent striking example is furnished by the structural-functional approach as developed by Parsons, Merton, and others. Moreover, this theory also obviates the two difficulties mentioned above, in that it holds sociology to be the science of institutional structure and its basic unit as the “actor-situation.”1 Basic to sociology, says Talcott Parsons, must be a theory of social systems. He defines a social system as “a system of social action involving a plurality of interacting individuals,” and he clarifies action as meaning “motivated human behavior.”2 Consider his prescription of “the functional prerequisites of the social system:”

“Functional requirements of the maintenance of any such pattern system or pattern line of change can be generalized to a certain degree. In the first place, of course, a social system must somehow provide for the minimum biological and psychological needs of a sufficient proportion of its component members. On a more strictly social level, there seem to be two primary fundamental foci of its functional prerequisites. One lies in the problem of order, in the problem of the coordination of the activities of the various members in such a way that they are prevented from mutually blocking each other’s action or destroying one another by actual physical destruction of the organism, and, on the other hand, they are sufficiently geared in with each other so that they do mutually contribute to the functioning of the system as a whole. The second focus is on adequacy of motivation. The system can only function if a sufficient proportion of its members perform the essential social roles with an adequate degree of effectiveness. If they are not adequately motivated to this minimum level of contribution to the system, the system, itself, of course, cannot operate. A variety of further elaborations of the problem of functional prerequisites can be worked out from these starting points.”3

Obviously, the statements in this paragraph constitute a series of truisms derived from the definition of a social system. They may be recast in the form of the following proposition: If a social system consists of social action involving a plurality of interacting individuals, then the conditions permitting such social action must be met, i.e., the survival of a sufficient number of individuals to engage in social action, kinds of action which do not impede further action, and motivations adequate to continuing nonblocking action. One may therefore predict that any internal or external condition which destroys more than the needed number of persons to carry on a social system, which leads to an excessive amount of mutually opposing action, or which negates previously effective sources of motivation will lead to the downfall of that system. Thus the attention of the investigator is directed to specific crucial empirical facts in evaluating the factors making for the success or failure of social systems.

The question may be raised, however, of whether this truism meets Dr. Rose’s criteria of relevance and usefulness. The variables included are perhaps too general to dictate predictions specific enough for empirical verification. Even if one had the most precise knowledge of the structural and functional categories of a social system, one could not predict that a given change in a behavior pattern or shift in motivation would necessarily be dysfunctional to the system. Professor Merton has called attention to the importance of “functional alternatives, equivalents, or substitutes."4 This concept permits the realization that certain functions, even if indispensable to a social system, may be performed by a variety of cultural forms. His distinction between manifest and latent functions also complicates the problem of assessing the effects of change in “particular conditions and process” upon a social system. An item may be manifestly functional and latently dysfunctional, or manifestly dysfunctional and latently functional. Extended observation may be required to determine which is the case. If the observer is also a participant in the social system under study, his own identification of himself with it will render it difficult for him to decide, in the short run, whether a given cultural item is functional or dysfunctional to the effectiveness of the system. The notion of “function” thus assumes a subjective character. What is functional for one group may be dysfunctional for another. Even if the observer attempts to view a social system from an ethically neutral vantage point, his decision concerning the functionality or dysfunctionality of a set of conditions for any individual or subgroup implies a definite value as to what constitutes the “good life"—unless he employs their goals as a touchstone.

Not only does the value identification of the observer make problematic an objective determination of the functionality or dysfunctionality of given cultural items, but it also may render the manifest or latent character of a function equally dependent upon his perspective. Thus Professor Merton5 designates as a latent function of the political machine, not fulfilled by other alternatives and often unrecognized by political reformers, the personal service which the political boss gives to members of minorities who are fearful of formal agencies. But to whom, besides the political reformer who is now being informed of it, is this activity of the political boss latent? While it may not be his prime purpose, the boss knows what he is doing and frequently defends his existence in just these terms. To the individual he helped, also, such activity may appear as manifest, while the vote-catching aspect of the boss’s behavior is latent. Both participants, not accustomed to taking a total view of the social system, may regard the tactics of the political boss as manifestly functional to themselves, without seeing, as a sociologist might, whether these actions contribute to the maintenance of the social system as a whole and/or the welfare of which, if any, of its participants. And now we are led back to the original problem of deciding which activities are functional and which dysfunctional, without receiving any great aid from the distinction between manifest and latent functions.

These considerations cast doubt upon the scientific utility of functionalism. Instead of formulating a priori assumptions concerning the “needs” of social systems, we can simply observe the activities carried on by participants in a social system. We can study the social processes which motivate certain kinds of behavior and the consequences of this behavior, without invoking the notion of function. If, for example, the training which the child receives in the family orients him to goals which conflict with those of groups which he enters as an adult, then this consequence can be noted without castigating the family as “dysfunctional."

In support of this suggested rejection of the functional approach as unrewarding, let us examine three possible meanings of the term “functionalism.” The first is that of reinforcing, implementing, or contributing to a common end. This is the meaning accepted in the above discussion, and its difficulties have been indicated. It leads to propositions which are circular, obvious, or nonverifiable. A second meaning is that two items mesh or interlock. All that this implies is that they are compatible, that they can coexist, and that such imputations are subject to empirical investigation and are not in the present state of knowledge to be determined in terms of psychological or cultural theory. For example, the fact that idealist philosophies may be compatible with either “radical” or “reactionary” political views is a matter of experience and not deducible from the “nature” of such philosophies.

The third meaning of “functionalism” is the semimathematical one of dependence or invariant relationship. Two things vary together; one is a function of the other. In verifying such mutual dependencies, the language of functionalism is excess baggage. One can seek to establish social laws without reference to “needs,” “compensatory mechanisms,” etc.

Thus one must reluctantly conclude that, despite the seeming promise of the structural-functional theory as a tautology capable of yielding practical predictions, it does not appear useful in its present form. It must still be a painstaking matter of empirical investigation to determine the minimum conditions for survival of any social system, to determine which roles are essential and how they must be performed. Then there are the additional problems of isolating the “contribution” of any item to the ongoing system (except by “thinking it away”), of verifying latent functions and dysfunctions within the confines of one society. It is the belief of this writer that the notion of function is an unnecessary “intervening variable” in establishing invariant relationships among social phenomena, though it may prove its value in directing the attention of sociologists to certain relationships which they might otherwise have overlooked.

Notes

1 Talcott Parsons. 1949. Essays in Sociological Theory Pure and Applied. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, pp. 32 and 39.

2 Ibid, pp. 6, 33.

3 Ibid, p. 6.

4 Robert K. Merton. 1949. Social Theory and Social Structure: Toward the Codification of Theory and Research. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, pp. 35-36.

5 Ibid, p. 79.

Marx, Weber, and Pareto on the Changing Status of Women

Helen M. Hacker Originally published 1953

General theories of social change may be valuable in providing basic orientations in a dynamic world, but of equal interest to the social scientist are the specific hypotheses which may be derived from these theories and subjected to empirical verification. Such derived hypotheses, of course, deal with smaller segments of the social universe. In the present case recent changes in the role and status of women have been taken as the social event which may be explained in terms of a general theory of social change. In pursuit of this purpose we turn to three architectonic masters of the past: Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Vilfredo Pareto. The attempt here is not so much to find explicit references to women in the writings of these theorists, but to make applications from their general schemes to the special problem of women in modern society.

Karl Marx

The name of Karl Marx has become identified with the economic interpretation of history, a view which holds that economic institutions are inherently more dynamic than other institutions, and, although there is mutual interaction among all the institutions of a culture, economic changes are usually prior and most fundamental. The relevance of Marx to changes in the role and status of women will be considered under four heads: (1) the material changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution; (2) the ideological changes consequent upon the Industrial Revolution; (3) the social basis of leadership in the woman’s movement; and (4) socialist views on the “woman question.”

Too familiar for extended comment are the economic changes brought about by the industrial, commercial, and agrarian revolutions. The accumulating stream of inventions over the period from the Protestant Reformation to the Victorian Age broke the bonds of feudalism and undermined the domestic system. The skills of handicraftsmen in the towns became obsolete with the increasing use of machinery, and the pull of the factories combined with the push of enclosures to attract the yeomen and peasants from the countryside to the industrial towns.

Production became more and more roundabout with an increasing number of processes between raw materials and finished products. Capital requirements and the necessary centralization of steam power prevented workers from acquiring and using the new machines in their own homes, and they were too lacking in social skills to form producing cooperatives.

Not only were the methods of production transformed, but the new methods of production gave rise to new relations of production. The family no longer worked as a productive unit, but offered themselves as individuals upon the labor market. Division of labor in the factory replaced the cooperative work in the home. The abysmally low wages of the early days of industrial capitalism often made it necessary for wife and children to supplement the man’s earnings.

Thus, the center of activities was shifted from the home to the factory. Here the worker was viewed as a commodity, to use Marx’s word, a factor of production, and his other roles as father, husband, community member, son of God, were of minor concern. Ties of sentiment and tradition were set aside, and the patriarchal family, which had been a microcosm of the feudalistic structure, crumbled under the atomizing forces of capitalism.

With the husband and father no longer the economic director of the household economy, familism was discouraged and individualism fostered. Thus the stage was set for women to emerge from the shadows of the home into the glare of the workaday world. Working-class women trudged to work with their husbands and shared the factory discipline. Middle-class women enjoyed new comforts and leisure in the home or sought more active participation in the community and the business and professional world.

Concomitant with changes in the mode of production came a new social climate in which the strong winds of rationality, democracy, and nationalism blew coldly on the familial hearth. Workers habituated to the machine carried a practical, matter-of-fact attitude over into other areas of life, nor was the family of the rationalizing entrepreneur immune to the growing influence of secularism, skepticism, science. Timeworn institutions and ideas were subjected to scrutiny, including old notions regarding the proper province of women.

The French Revolution ushered in the ideology of the rights of man. The rights of citizenship lost their dependence upon property ownership and family identification. Men voted as individual citizens, not as family representatives. The decreasing emphasis on family implied a new basis for the social role of women.

Nationalism reinforced democracy in playing down the family. The first allegiance was to the nation-state rather than to the family or local community, and country was served by individuals. In time of war women left small children to their own devices to answer the patriotic call to replace the absent men in the factories.

Women’s new participation in industry had its psychological effects. Their role as worker influenced their family and general social roles, and these roles often came into conflict. Traditional femininity, as expressed in dress, differential behavior, coquettishness, emotionality, etc., could not survive the impersonal demands of the job. Secondly, as is true of rising classes, economic independence brought the desire for legal, social, and political rights.

The Industrial Revolution, by creating a new class of leisured and educated women, provided a source of leadership, as well as the materialistic base, for the woman’s movement. Marx and Engels cried their jeremiads on the plight of women under capitalism.1 They believed that in bourgeois marriage women were regarded essentially as instruments of production, their product being legitimate heirs. Modern adultery was in part an expression of women’s rebellion against the exclusive supremacy of men in a patriarchal society, and in part an expression of the bourgeois desire for a community of women, a system of wives in common.2

Marx and Engels saw modern marriage and modern prostitution as merely two sides of the same coin—one being public and the other private prostitution. Public prostitution, as old as monogamy, was reinforced by the economic power of the bourgeoisie, indirectly, by foisting degrading conditions of life upon proletarian women, and directly, by seducing them. “Factory servitude, like any other,” says Engels, “confers the jus primae noctis upon the master.”3 A hint or threat from the employer is supposedly sufficient to put the worker’s wife or daughter at his disposal. Moreover, proclaims The Manifesto, “Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.”4

From this view of women under capitalism as exploited in the factory, in the home, and on the street, it would seem that Marx did not believe that his analysis of the transition from feudalism to capitalism implied any favorable changes in the position of women—or only as preparing the material conditions for the consummation of socialism in which the status of women as mere instruments of production would be done away with. (The status of women under socialism is beyond the confines of this paper.) But for that matter neither did Marx lay heavy emphasis on the change from status to contract for men; he concentrated on the evils, shams, and hypocrisies of capitalism.

We can, however, supplement his analysis by pointing out the contradictory effects of capitalism. Certainly monogamy based on private property and prostitution based on the subordination of women are not unique to capitalism, although capitalism may have perpetuated and reinforced them. It is also true that while capitalism provided the material basis for the emancipation of women, the relations of production which it established added new pressures to their traditional servitude and prevented them from realizing the social potentialities inherent in the changed methods of production. Marx delighted in pointing out the contradictions of capitalism, and here is another for him.

Max Weber

To a considerable extent, Weber’s analysis of bureaucracy may be viewed as a refinement of Marx’s account of capitalism.5 Bureaucracy is made necessary, says Weber, by the interdependence of a complex, ever more inclusive society based on the division of labor, and is implicit in any large-scale organization, whether it be cartel or trade union, capitalistic or socialistic. The continuing momentum of the Industrial Revolution has brought such specialization of function that only God can be a jack of all trades.

A key concept in Weber’s study of bureaucracy is the notion of “office.” (Modern sociology prefers the term “status,” which means a collection of rights and duties.) An office is a position in a bureaucratically governed structure which entails the discharge of specific duties and the receipt of certain emoluments. Each office has its own jurisdictional area defined in such a way as to make it fit with a minimum of overlapping or hiatuses into a firmly ordered system of super- and subordination, in which there is a supervision of the lower offices by the higher ones. Office-holding is a vocation (Beruf), requiring a prescribed course of training. Entrance into an office is usually impossible without passing the prescribed and special examinations which are presumed to establish a person’s qualifications for fulfilling the duties of an office and executing its corresponding rights.

In essence, bureaucracy represents the attempt to achieve a government of law, and not of men. For the personal fealty of feudalism it substitutes loyalty to one’s office. Presented in the following discussion are only a few salient features of Weber’s detailed analysis of bureaucratic organization, but sufficient, perhaps, to indicate several implications for the changing role and status of women.

In the first place, bureaucracy, by abjuring individual privilege and bestowals of favor, strikes at the emotional, personal, and irrational elements in life, and tends to undermine special treatment of groups or individuals. Women, as well as men, are subject to the same impersonal rules. Since special pleading has been traditionally thought to be woman’s forte, bureaucracy has the effect of modifying the ascribed status of women and altering the female stereotype. Also, with the increasing bureaucratization of society, women must satisfy their needs as individuals rather than as family members. They must stand in line with men to apply for unemployment insurance, old age benefits, dog licenses, mortgage loans, employment interviews, college registrations, etc.

Secondly, bureaucratization fosters specialization as offices multiply. Ever increasing areas of life are professionalized and the amateur is discarded. Women, as the main amateur group in society, are more and more deprived of employment, and forced to train themselves for specialized positions which are increasingly available to them.

In general, bureaucratization parallels democratization, although the two may come into conflict. Thus, in bureaucratic control there is a tendency to levelling in the interest of the broadest possible basis of recruitment in terms of technical competence. This tendency would lead to the undermining of all minority groups, including women, whose ascribed status served to remove them from the sphere of effective competition.6 On the other hand, there is a tendency to plutocracy growing out of the interest in the greatest possible length of technical training. Today such training often lasts up to the age of thirty. Previously submerged strata, such as women, may have special obstacles to overcome in qualifying as experts.

While bureaucratization extends the range of selection at the foot of the vocational ladder, it renders mobility at higher rungs more difficult. Ancillary attributes come to be attached to the various offices (or achieved statuses) which those aspirants who have not come up by regular channels are thought to lack. Thus, bureaucracy affords more freedom to those beginning their careers, but tends to freeze persons at upper levels.

This reinforcement of status is particularly true for women, because fewer offices are open to them, and consequently, their mobility is less than men’s. For example, a woman might work up to be head of the Federal Security Agency but she would have less possibility than a man of transferring to the top position in the Department of Commerce. In the case of women, even more than men, special knowledge and long service are emphasized more than general capacity.

The reader may wonder at the omission of any consideration of bureaucratization as a final stage in social movements. The course of bureaucratic development is frequently such that the separation of the organization from the needs of its clientele grows. The organization becomes devoted to procedure and manifests lack of adaptability to changing conditions, its sole interest being self-perpetuation. Although such developments may be characteristic of contemporary women’s organizations, this phenomenon is not vitally related to the major theme of the changing status of women.

Weber has contributed to our understanding of the changing role and status of women not only through his analysis of bureaucracy, but also through his ideological interpretation of social change, as expressed in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. But the lessons here to be derived have already been gleaned from Marx, whom Weber does not contradict, but supplements. It makes no difference whether capitalism came into existence as a result of a new psychological attitude derived from the religious revolution of the sixteenth century or whether capitalism developed its own religious system and ethics. There is no a priori reason for supposing that the economic structure is more inherently dynamic than any other, or that the religious system is.

The analysis must be made for each particular case, and even in the limited case of capitalism the evidence is not univocal. Modern social science favors the functional approach, discussed below, which views society as being in moving equilibrium and, in carrying on investigations of reciprocal changes in a social system, recognizes that the selection of a starting point is merely a matter of convenience. Weber himself admits as much when he says that he does not seek to establish priority but only concomitance of the capitalistic spirit with the incidence of capitalism. Other evidence, however, suggests that this disclaimer is a purely formal one. In any case, whether economic organization or ideology is the prime mover, ideological influences have been stated already under Marx.

Vilfredo Pareto

In his Trattato di Sociologia Generale (1916), Pareto sets forth a theory of social equilibrium which depends upon the distribution of “residues” among the social classes.7 Residues, according to Pareto, are the driving forces of human action, the “non-logical manifestations of sentiments,” or “instincts.” They correspond roughly to what contemporary psychologists call complexes.

He groups the residues under six general classes, but only the first two classes, the residues of combinations and the residues of persistence of aggregates, are most important for his theory of social change. By residues of combination he means inventive faculty, ingeniousness, originality, imagination, or the ability to synthesize. On the whole, this class of residues represents the progressive elements in society as contrasted with Class II, the “myth-making instinct” or the “instinct of group persistency,” which is the conservative force. Residues of persistence of aggregates, Class II, signify a drive to continue the type of culture and social relations established as a result of Class I residues.

The residues are non-logical, but men wish to “rationalize” their actions, and the devices they use to cloak their acts with a show of reason Pareto calls “derivations.” These are grouped under four broad classes: (1) assertions; (2) authority; (3) accord with sentiments or with principles; and (4) verbal proofs. Although there is interaction among residues and derivations, the influence of residues upon derivations is much more powerful. In fact, the residues may be considered almost as constants in human action, while the derivations which express the residues change with the times.

In the interest of brevity it is necessary to omit his division of society into the two economic classes of speculators and rentiers, who are characterized respectively by the predominance of Class I and Class II residues. Turning to the distribution of political power, he holds that all societies are divided into a higher and a lower stratum, the elite and the non-elite, the rulers and the ruled. The upper stratum is normally rich in the residues of combination and the lower in those of persistence of aggregates. The elite may have come to power as “lions,” that is, by using force, but they find that “ruse” is more effective in maintaining power, and hence the elite becomes increasingly dominated by “foxes” or men skilled in the use of ruse.

Circulation of the elite is constantly changing the governing elite, as recruits are admitted from below. This slow transformation of the elite is necessary to maintain it in power because it declines in vigor through the loss of the proper residues. Revolutions are precipitated when the circulation of the elite fails, causing an accumulation of superior elements in the subject class and a glut of inferior elements in the ruling class. This is likely to happen when the elite abandons force and resorts to fraud, loses its superior residues, and thus exposes its weakness to the power-hungry speculators and lions below. These latter do not hesitate to use their own force against the aristocracy and set up a new elite. When this happens, the equilibrium is once again restored and the cycle of transformation begins anew.

If space may be taken for a word of criticism, in some respects Pareto provides a “natural history” of revolution, but the theory of instincts upon which he has founded his system is subjective. His residues are constructs, corresponding to no objective reality. Pareto says that whatever hinders the free circulation of people endowed with the instincts fitting men to rule tends to cause an upheaval. One must inquire into the origin of these “instincts.”

In applying Pareto’s theories to the changing role and status of women, let us consider first his notion of the circulation of the elite. It is improbable that the idea of women as a submerged stratum ever entered Pareto’s mind. Whether their husbands, sons, and lovers were lions or foxes, women have by and large played the part of the fox, if not the serpent. As one of the Church Fathers put it: “Fierce is the dragon, cunning the asp; but woman has the malice of both” (St. Gregory of Nazianzum).

There are, however, two writers, Mathias and Mathilde Vaerting, who have viewed the division between the sexes as a class cleavage.8 Their speculations are guided by the Marxist conception of history as the history of class struggles, and they perceive women as an oppressed class in our society. Like Marx, they regard ideologies as the rationalizations of power relationships. In their interpretation of ancient history, they too must struggle against the subtle falsifications of historians with the “master-class bias,” men whose rearing in patriarchal traditions has rendered them incapable of understanding the fundamentally different organizations and ideologies of matriarchal societies.

The Vaertings believe they have found sufficient documentary evidence for the statement that in a society in which women rule there is a complete reversal of the relative positions of the sexes, accompanied by a complete reversal of social attitudes, or, to use Pareto’s terminology, a different distribution of the residues. For the criteria of domination of one sex they use the legal position (including property rights), the division of labor, and ideologies (including moral codes, religion, sex ethics, ideals of beauty, etc.) and establish ancient Egypt, Libya, and Sparta as Women’s States.

They believe that so-called “masculine” and “feminine” traits are psychological manifestations of an either dominant or subordinate social position. (The psychologist A. H. Maslow also favors substituting the concepts of high and low dominance for masculine and feminine, though he does not make the dubious assumption that such personality traits are exclusively related to social position.)9 The Vaertings assume a pendulum movement between female and male domination. In their view evolution went from an original state in which women ruled to a state of masculine domination, passing through a transitory phase of sex equality (in which, for instance, the Teutons were found at the time of Tacitus). The Vaertings see, today, the pendulum swinging back and, at the present stage, approaching again an intermediate state of equality.

They think that the change was a necessary consequence of the abuses to which any hegemony ultimately leads owing to its inner laws—just as Marx thought the inner contradictions of capitalism would lead to its collapse. The Vaertings, however, do not postulate a “dictatorship of women” as a preliminary stage to the ideal “classless” society. Parallels with Pareto may also be found. To the extent that able women are drawn into the governing male elite, causing its gradual transformation, revolution will be averted. The position of the Vaertings is obviously open to criticism, but it serves to show a possible application of Pareto’s doctrine of the circulation of the elite.

We pass now to a brief mention of the role of the residues and derivations. These concepts represent Pareto’s contribution to a theory of ideology. His dichotomy between the derivations and the residues parallels that of Marx between ideological superstructure and relations of production, of Freud between rationalizations and unconscious motivations, of the functionalist school between manifest function and latent function, of the sociologist between formal structure and informal structure, of the semanticists between emotive and referential, of Karl Mannheim between ideologies-and-utopias and existential situations, etc.

Pareto posits the tendency to shift from one derivation to another according to convenience, but all derivations support relatively unchanging residues or valuations. (That this idea is itself a derivation, and hence non-logical, seemingly does not occur to Pareto.) But let us look at the changing derivations with regard to women. The residue in this case is that women by nature are fitted for a different role in society from men.

What have been the derivations rationalizing this residue? It was once thought that women were more variable than men. Havelock Ellis initiated the view that there is a greater “organic variational tendency” in men, so that while there are more geniuses to be found among men, there are also more idiots and criminals among them.10 Although Ellis regarded the difference in variability between men and women as organic, it is not unlikely that his views reflect the increased social participation of women in positions previously closed to them. Incidentally, this “variational tendency” has been seriously challenged by Karl Pearson, L. S. Hollingworth, and others.11 If true, it is certainly susceptible of a sociological explanation. Most psychologists today believe that sex differences in intelligence are negligible.

The next shift in derivations is that while men and women were similar in intellectual capacity, they differed in specific abilities. Thus, males excelled in numerical and spatial relations, while feminine prestige rested on verbal accomplishment and artistic sensitivity. That such differences are biological in origin is contested, in at least one instance, by G. M. Gilbert’s study of musical ability in which it was found that sex differences disappeared when musical training was held constant.12

A final derivation to be noted is that provided by psychoanalysis. Faced with the indubitable fact that women were successfully performing an ever increasing number of civic, business, industrial, and professional roles, such epigoni of Freud as Dr. Marynia Farnham, Ferdinand Lundberg, Dr. Banay, and Helena Deutsch have averred that modern women are dismally unhappy, and that their unhappiness stems from a conflict of their biological natures with their new social roles, which they link to their biological roles.13 The truly feminine woman in their view does not presume to understand the “man’s world,” much less compete in it.

Thus we see that the argument has shifted from pseudo-scientific to pseudo-moralistic grounds, but no matter what the level of sophistication of the derivations, the residue remains that woman’s place is uniquely in the home carrying on breeding and tending functions. One cannot hazard a guess as to the future constancy of this residue.

Contemporary Sociology

The reader who has followed this speculative account of how Marx, Weber, and Pareto might explain the changes in the role and status of modern women may well wonder to what extent their theories have been influential in bringing about such changes. This question itself invokes a theory of social change, especially in regard to the relative influences of material and ideological factors in human history, as discussed above. Before taking up this more general aspect of the question, we can find a preliminary answer in pointing to the limitations of the theories under consideration.

First of all, it should be remembered that these theorists did not speak directly about women. They provided general theories of social change, which have here been applied to the special case of changes in the status of women. Marx, of course, made many explicit references to women, but the present extrapolation draws not so much on these references as on the implications of his general analysis of the genesis and development of industrial capitalism. To consider, therefore, how far changes in the status of women may be attributed to the theories of these three thinkers is an enterprise second removed from the data. No doubt they helped to establish a new climate of opinion in which many problems were exposed, including that of women.

Secondly, Weber and Pareto, if not Marx, were primarily concerned with describing and explaining social change rather than effecting it. No one pretended to a greater detachment from the follies of men than Pareto, and Weber was convinced that sociological research must be “value-free.” Marx, it is true, expressed himself as wishing more to change the world than to understand it, and indeed his theories became the basis of a social movement which, whatever its contemporary manifestations, has actively campaigned, especially in Europe, for a new social role for women.

In the third place, it is difficult to assess the popular influence of such recondite theories. Weber and Pareto addressed themselves to a limited group of scholars, and their ideas did not lend themselves to extensive popularization. The case would be quite different for a philosopher like John Dewey, whose disciples were numerous, and vigorous in teaching the next generation. The final answer to the question will have to wait upon extensive empirical research in which sociology and social psychology must supplement history. Whatever their effect may be found to be, it is improbable that these theories were responsible in any but the most minor way for recent changes in women’s rights and duties. One would look rather to feminine leadership, encroaching upon the special privileges of men, and the massive social change initiated by the Industrial Revolution.

In conducting research on the social effects of these theories of social change one might suppose that the theories themselves would provide working hypotheses. Undoubtedly they will be suggestive, but modern social scientists are turning away from master conceptual schemes, which run far ahead of present capacities for verification of derived specific theories, in favor of what Robert K. Merton has called “theories of the middle range”—special theories applicable to limited ranges of data rather than one grand architectonic structure.14

Such scientists, who deem Marx too particularistic and Pareto too abstract and tautological, find in the structural-functional approach to the understanding of social change a framework for investigating changes in the microcosmic structures within a society.15 In this conception a society is viewed as interdependent institutions in a moving equilibrium in which changes occurring in one institution tend to produce changes in related institutions—that “strain toward consistency” noted by Sumner. Too great conflicts among institutions are precluded by the need of the individual to integrate his roles and achieve a unified life outlook.

What constitutes a conflict, of course, may represent in part a social valuation, except in the obvious physical case where a person cannot be in two places or perform contradictory acts at the same time. To illustrate the latter, the same person cannot participate in a religious institution which requires a week of solitary retreat every year and a family institution which requires that a husband may never leave his wife overnight. But whether there is a conflict between being a good husband and beating one’s wife is a matter of social definition. It remains true, however, that the establishment of certain patterns in one institution or of a given set of social values rules out certain possibilities in related institutions or value systems. Slavery would be impossible in a region of minimal food supply. Nor can we expect a society which cleaves to the primacy of the goal of economic productivity to call a moratorium upon invention.

A perfect correlation among the various institutions of a culture must not be assumed. It is doubtful whether all societies, even preliterate ones, have as integrated cultures as Dr. Benedict expounded in her configurational approach to the Zuni, Dobuans, and Kwakiutl, but the organic analogy, if not pressed too far, does have some validity.16 Although we may not find with Spengler “deep uniformities between the differential calculus and the dynastic principle of politics in the age of Louis XIV, between the Classical city-state and the Euclidean geometry, between the space perspective of Western oil painting and the conquest of space by railroad, telephone and long-range weapon, between contrapuntal music and credit economics,” still there tend to be patterns, if not souls, of culture.17

What this means for the changing role and status of women is that given our business civilization, our ideology of democracy and individualism, our secular rationalism, it is unlikely that women will resume their traditional role unless this syndrome is altered. (Democracy and science were crushed under the heel of fascism, but even Nazi Germany found it necessary to call women from the three “Ks” to reenter the factories.) Similarly, women’s increasing participation in vocational and civic groups reinforces industrialism, democracy, etc.

One must guard, of course, against the fallacy of assuming that historically isolated connections are necessary connections. While the patriarchal family was associated with the agrarian and hand-tool way of life, it may be compatible with other economic institutions, and, conversely, the equalitarian family may be a possibility in a predominantly agricultural society. There are so many variables to be considered! The web of inter-relationships in our present society, however, would seem to be such as to make the restoration of the eighteenth-century woman impossible unless we scrap the machines and burn the books.

Admittedly conflicts abound in our culture, and prominent among them are disharmonies in women’s roles and statuses.18 These, like other conflicts, often arise from disparities in the rates of change of various institutions. Such rapid changes may have unanticipated consequences for which adjustment is sought.

The ideology of the pre-urban, pre-industrial era which ascribed certain roles to women in our society has come into conflict with the individualistic ideology engendered by the machine age. This conflict finds concrete expression in the difficulties experienced by modern women in their efforts to unify the roles which they play in the contemporary world. Specifically, the problem confronting women is how to reorganize marriage and family institutions to fit changing economic and political institutions. It is not beyond hope that a democratic resolution may be found for the contradictions present today in the role and status of American women.

Notes

1 See Marx, Karl. 1906. Capital. Trans. by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling. Chicago, IL: Charles H. Kerr & Co., esp. pp. 431-40, 506-8, 536, and references noted below.

2 Engels, Frederick. 1902. The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. Trans. by Ernest Untermann. Chicago, IL: Charles H. Kerr & Co., pp. 81-2. Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. 1888. The Communist Manifesto. Trans. by Samuel Moore. Chicago, IL: Charles H. Kerr & Co., pp. 38-9.

3 Engels, Frederick. 1892. The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844. Trans. by Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky. London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., pp. 149, 181.

4 The Communist Manifesto, op. cit., p. 39.

5 Weber, Max. 1922. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Tuebingen, J. C. B. Mohr, pp. 650-78. See also Gerth H. H., and C. Wright Mills. 1946. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 196-244.

6 Hacker, Helen Mayer. 1951. “Women as a Minority Group.” Social Forces 30(October): 60-69.

7 Pareto, Vilfredo. 1935. The Mind and Society. Trans. by Andrew Bongiorno and Arthur Livingston, 4 vols. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.

8 Vaerting, Mathilde and Mathias Vaerting. 1923. The Dominant Sex: A Study in the Sociology of Sex Differentiation. Trans. by Eden and Cedar Paul. New York: George H. Doran Co.

9 Maslow, A. H. 1939. “Dominance, Personality, and Social Behavior in Women.” Journal of Social Psychology 10: 3-39, particularly p. 18.

10 Ellis, Havelock. 1934. Man and Woman: A Study of Secondary and Tertiary Sexual Characters (1894), 8th rev. ed. London: Heinemann. p. 439. Other writers have followed Ellis’s lead. See, for example, Carpenter, Edward. 1911. Love’s Coming of Age. New York: Modern Library, pp. 45 and 187; and Thorndike, E. L. 1910. Educational Psychology. p. 35.

11 Pearson, Karl. 1987. “Variation in Man and Woman,” Pp. 256 in The Chances of Death and Other Studies in Evolution, Vol. I. London: Cambridge University Press. Hollingworth, Leta and Helen Montague. 1914. “The Comparative Variability of the Sexes at Birth.” American Journal of Sociology. 20(November): 335-70. Hollingworth, Leta S. 1922. “Differential Action Upon the Sexes of Forces Which Tend to Segregate the Feebleminded.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology and Social Psychology 17(April-June): 35-57. Hollingworth, Leta Stetter. 1914. “Variability as Related to Sex Differences in Achievement.” American Journal of Sociology 19(January): 510-30.

12 Gilbert, G. M. 1942. “Sex Differences in Musical Aptitude and Training.” Journal of General Psychology 26(January): 19-33.

13 Lundberg, Ferdinand and Marynia F. Farnham. 1947. Modern Woman: The Lost Sex. New York: Harper and Bros. Deutsch, Helene. 1944-1945. The Psychology of Women, 2 vols. New York: Grune and Stratton.

14 Merton, Robert K. 1949. Social Theory and Social Structure. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, p. 5.

15 For an indication of some of the theoretical difficulties of the structural-functional approach, the modern refinement of older notions of functionalism, see Hacker, Helen Mayer. 1951. “Arnold Rose’s ‘A Deductive Ideal-Type Method.” American Journal of Sociology 56(January): 354-56.

16 Benedict, Ruth. 1934. Patterns of Culture. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.

17 Spengler, Oswald. 1926. Decline of the West. Trans. by Charles Francis Atkinson, 2 vols. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, vol. 1, p. 7.

18 See Hacker, Helen Mayer. “Towards a Definition of Role Conflicts in Modern Women.” Unpublished Manuscript.

The Ishmael Complex

Helen M. Hacker Originally published 1952

I.

Although Freud’s theory of the Oedipus Complex has proved an enormously fruitful hypothesis to social scientists in approaching problems ranging from the socialization of the child to the genesis of attitudes toward the state, its applicability has been shown to be limited by cultural factors. In asserting the universality of the Oedipus Complex, Freud assumed the constancy of certain family patterns which are in fact widely variable. In the United States, particularly, little evidence of the Oedipal situation in the narrow sense postulated by Freud has been found. Recent investigations in this country reveal no reliable difference between boys and girls as to preference for either parent (31). But even though parent-child relationships in America are not generalized in the Oedipus design, no alternative explanation of object choice in childhood has been suggested.

The purpose of this article is to propose another developmental pattern which will approximate more closely the typical elements of the American child’s early home environment. Distinguishing characteristics of American culture which influence childhood experiences include the equalitarian nature of the American family, social and geographic mobility, democratic attitudes, importance attached to formal education, etc. The significance of these factors in inhibiting the Oedipus syndrome is apparent. Since the father is not the sole wielder of authority, he is not exclusively to be feared. Since the emphasis is on surpassing the father rather than on replacing him—often through the medium of education—he is not so much respected (23). Since the American father bestows affection upon the child, he may be an object of love. And since class lines are less firmly drawn than in Europe, the child is not so restricted in his choice of playmates to families of the same social standing as the parents. Nor, indeed, is the child kept as much in the protected confines of the home; he has a greater range of contacts outside the home, and less of his life is centered in the family.

In accordance with these variations from the family pattern which gave rise to the Oedipus Complex, this paper postulates not a sexual attachment to the cross-sex parent, but a libidinal tie to both parents fused into a combined maternal-paternal image in which the desired qualities of both parents are preserved, and their deficiencies eliminated.

For suggesting certain features of the complex to be examined the writer is indebted to a recent article in a literary magazine (13). This article calls attention to a significant myth which reappears in a number of juvenile classics: Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, Two Years Before the Mast, and The Leatherstocking Tales. In each of these works an outcaste American lad is found in some isolated primitive expanse, such as the broad Mississippi, the virgin forest, a deserted shore, the vast sea—in the company of an older, colored, not wholly civilized male associate from whom the young man receives lavish affection that is reciprocated in large measure. This common relationship, the author suggests, carries with it no overt homosexual display, but is at all times chaste and pure.

From the continued popularity of these works, we may provisionally construe the common theme of an isolated, aim-inhibited, homosexual relationship between a declassed American lad and a colored outcaste as an unconscious myth prevalent in our society.1 In the following study the attempt is made: (1) to examine in somewhat greater detail the elements of this unconscious myth; (2) to indicate its locus in our society; (3) to suggest certain insights into the child’s attitude toward his parents as revealed by this myth; (4) to analyze the significance of color differences in the mythic lovers; (5) to indicate some techniques of further research that might be used for verification of the myth; and (6) to discuss in general the significance of unconscious myths for the social sciences.

In each case these juvenile classics concern themselves with an American young man who is estranged from conventional society. In The Leatherstocking Tales the scenes occur at campsites that are minute in the vast forest. In Melville’s Moby Dick the mythical adventure takes place aboard a small whaling ship tossed over the immense seas. And again, in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, we find the Platonic pair adrift on a tiny raft in the broad reaches of the Mississippi River. Each of these locales is distinguished by its isolation, a remoteness that is accentuated by the juxtaposition of the minute campsite, small boat, tiny raft in the midst of some immeasurable natural expanse.

In furtherance of this consistently portrayed atmosphere that is entirely removed from the conventional, the outcaste American young man in each case is to be found in the company of a colored man whose appearance and behavior in every respect are appropriate to the non-civilized locale. Indeed, here too there is deliberate heightening of the primitive or savage or barbaric in the colored companion in order to underline the remoteness from conventional society. Thus, for example, Chingachgook in The Leatherstocking Tales is a redskin resplendent with paint. Queequeg in Moby Dick is purplish-yellow and moreover, tattooed with horrendous black squares. Similar traits appear for the colored outcastes in the other tales. Finally, these primitives frequently possess an ample array of resources for coping with the primitive environment into which the quasi-civilized white youth has been plunged: they are familiar with woodland lore, with tricks of the sea, or with the endless mysteries of the river and its secluded banks.

His white companion also is adept in these skills and at home, as his fellows never would be, in the remote locale and with his savage buddy. The American in fact is a voluntary exile from the restrains of conventional society.

Through these devices an overpowering impression is created of complete and utter separation from a normal social milieu. “Call me Ishmael,” cries Melville’s hero—the reference is of course to the Biblical exile. It seems appropriate, therefore, to designate our unconscious myth as the Ishmael Complex.

Now the extreme affection given to the white lad by his dark beloved in many of these tales is readily reciprocated, it is clear, if merely because the youth has thrust himself into a barbaric environment, and often is obliged to place himself under the protection of the resourceful primitive. Hence, also, the love between the couple exhibits all the qualities of a dependent relationship: their feelings for each other are tender, gentle, and particularly from the side of the colored man there is an attitude that even approaches maternal cherishing. Ishmael, for example, lies cozily in the arms of Queequeg, and Nigger Jim calls Huck “honey” in dulcet tones. These white youths are able to accept love from a colored man by virtue of their estrangement from the conventions of their culture. This classic juvenile homoeroticism is not in the accepted sense sexual or passionate; appropriate to the juvenile reader these tales are innocent.

II.

So much for the major elements of the Ishmael Complex. The very fancifulness of this unconscious myth, of course, quite forbids its realization; much as the Oedipus Complex, in our society, the Ishmael Complex, too, must be sublimated, and the libidinal energy which it expresses must be transferred to other objects.

The argument thus far has suggested the universality of the Ishmael Complex in America. This original hypothesis must now be refined, since sociological clues point to the greatest incidence of the Ishmael Complex in one sector of society—the middle class. It is characteristically the middle class juvenile reader, hedged about with rigid restraints on his freedom, who would savor vicariously these adventurous escapades occurring in an arena not of his time or place. Characteristically, it is the middle class child who must experience frustration and deferred reward.2 The differential compulsion of the mores upon the growing child in our society, according to class, has been well revealed in the current revision of Freud’s conception of the latency period. Freud had postulated that sexual interests are in abeyance in the child between the ages of approximately five and twelve years. During the period of latency the child engages in gang activities with members of his own sex and is apparently indifferent to members of the opposite sex. The French sociologist Frederic Le Play, in his studies of working class families, observed no period of latent sexuality in these children. Similarly, modern psychiatrists have found a steady development of sexual interest and expression in the children of lower income groups both in Europe and this country. They suggest that the period of latency, consequently, is more a product of parental prohibition and childish repression than a universal stage in psychic development (17, 32).

With this background, what insight can we achieve as regards the process of sublimation of the Ishmael Complex in the American middle class male adult? He frequently engages in boisterous camaraderie with his fellows in the locker room, in the smoking car, on fishing trips, in poker games, and the like. This exaggerated brusqueness and forced jocularity indeed testify to the presence of an inner sentimentality of great strength which is denied direct expression. Typically, the adult middle-class male feels conscious repugnance for any overt homosexual contact, and in fact is ridden with strong fears of homosexuality (15). On the other hand, the Kinsey report clearly reveals greater sexual freedom among the working classes: that is to say, such extreme sublimation is not to be found in the lower classes.

This behavior of the middle-class adult represents sublimations of the Ishmael Complex which develop in some fashion as the following: First, it is to be observed that the period of latency in the middle classes includes those years in which the Ishmael Complex is most vigorous. That is to say, at this time the middle-class child represses not only heterosexual desires, but also harbors in his unconscious a wish for intimate relations with members of the same sex. Both wishes may be manifested in future behavior. Thus, the Ishmael Complex finds partial fruition in the adult middle class male’s gruff sporting on fishing trips and during poker games. Moreover, it follows that the conscious repugnance for any gross homosexuality displayed by the middle-class male adult flows from the Ishmael Complex, in that the dearly held dream, culturally repressed into the unconscious, is threatened with desecration by any admission of the existence of physical homosexual passion. This sublime myth is instead translated into the rude forms of masculine fellowship. Again, the Ishmael Complex may allow us to account for the obsessive fears which beset the middle-class male regarding the extent of his own homosexuality: the wondersome Ishmael fantasy of his early years now calls for more intimate relations with his fellows than our culture approves, and he is obliged constantly to ward off and to dispel any conscious admission of homosexual feeling, no matter how chaste.

For the type of relationship with another man which the middle-class male in fact desires, in accordance with the Ishmael impulsion, is affectionate and not specifically sexual. When our society interprets such feelings as calling for more gross contact, thereby severely condemning these motivations, this cultural proscription acts to erect a formidable barrier to any conscious revival of the idyllic myth no matter in how attenuated a form. Indeed, present evidence suggests that the psychic development of the middle class male proceeds along bisexual lines. Withal, the homosexual urge differs from the heterosexual in that, as we have seen, the Ishmael Complex would express itself in a more sublimated and less direct form.3

Continuing with the exposition of what bearing the Ishmael Complex has on adult middle class male behavior, there remains for analysis the well-known phenomenon of protract, overt homosexuality. In terms of the Ishmael hypothesis homosexuality represents a fixation on the prepuberal Ishmael level. Adult homosexuals are those who have not been able to solve the conflicts raised in the Ishmael stage of psychic development, as discussed in Section III below. Such an arrested development is likely to occur in cases where the boy’s wish for tender solicitude from his father is severely frustrated, and/or where the mother is markedly deficient in companionable qualities (18). In such cases the adult is driven by a more than ordinary compulsion to find expression for his idyllic dream. Overcoming all cultural obstacles these persons may seek more direct and intimate relationships with members of the same sex. And yet it would appear that the Ishmael Complex is herewith abjured; for surely full physical expression spoils the myth’s fantasy. Nonetheless, although these rebels are fleeing from cultural demands, they are still obliged to fit in with standardized expectations of the sexual role, whether heterosexual or homosexual. So that, indeed, even by forming a close overt alliance with another male, the Ishmael Complex still fails of realization, for this alliance is not of the pure, innocent, idyllic strain found in the myth. Perhaps this interpretation may aid in clarifying the strikingly complex neuroticism of the male homosexual in our society.4

Greatly in contrast with this elaborate panoply of attitudes and behavior in homoerotic relations among middle-class males the behavior of the adult working class is far more simple and clear. As suggested above, the working-class child is not torturously bound by parental taboos, so that a latency period does not appear in his case; instead, during the childhood period, he enters spontaneously into relations of a sexual character. Hence, merely an attenuated Ishmael fantasy, if at all, puts itself forward, and in later life the working-class adult male exhibits less of the complicated sublimations of the complex presented above for the middle-class adult. Moreover, members of the working class, in their homosexual contacts, display far greater freedom, both in childhood and in adult life. In those instances where the working class adult male rebels against heterosexual relations, he engages in overt homosexuality with far less disturbance to his psychic life than the middle class homosexual—without having his homosexual satisfaction marred by the fact that it conflicts with the Ishmael fantasy’s innocent male friendship.

III.

This section is concerned with trying to gain insight into the child’s attitude toward his parents, as revealed by the Ishmael myth. It matters little whether this concern be taken instead to represent a search for the origins of the Ishmael Complex as shown by the child’s place in the nexus of family relationships. Operationally, the two objectives amount to the same thing. That is to say, by seeking for an explanation of the origin of the Ishmael Complex in the family constellation, we are led to re-examine and to reinterpret parent-child interaction in the light of the Ishmael myth.

First it must be noted that the prolongation of childhood in the American middle class family is of extreme relevance. For how else might so persistent and quasi-universal a fantasy as the Ishmael Complex succeed in developing during the “latency period,” if the child did not have ample time for autistic revery? The daydreams of the child often center about adventurous escapades in environments that are far removed from everyday life, and such preoccupation is consistent with the separation from conventional society found in the Ishmael Complex. This is equally true of the American middle class child’s participation in games in which he may assume the active roles of pirate, soldier, etc.

Now if we examine more closely the figure of the colored comforter, be he Queequeg or Nigger Jim, the question arises as to who his real-life prototype may be. This more important member of the dyad in the Ishmael myth has a strange duality. On the one hand, he is the embodiment of tenderness, affection, cherishing warmth, which are, most significantly, ever-present. In this aspect, the colored man partakes of the maternal presence in the American home. On the other hand, there are features of the colored man’s behavior which bespeak the paternal role. In the first place, he acts as potential guardian in a strange and perilous world beyond mere woman’s ken. He knows the ways of the bewildering forest and the illimitable sea, knows how to deal with the elements, dangerous animals, shipwreck, and all catastrophe. He may be looked to for fatherly guidance and succor. His masculine strength bolsters the boyish weakness of his companion. Furthermore, when the occasion demands it, he is mentor to his otherwise capable friend, initiating him into skills and techniques required for survival in a challenging world. His role as father-substitute is further implemented by the obvious fact of his actual masculinity. This is not merely a matter of sex alone, but is accentuated by a sturdy and well-built figure. He thus provides a suitable object of identification for the white youth who aspires at least to his father’s place, an identification which would be impossible if the colored man were only a mother figure.

Thus, the dual character of the colored outcaste stands forth; he is both father and mother. Or more accurately, he represents selections from the mother and father images. Strength and knowledge are borrowed from the father; tenderness and loving care from the mother. This combination in one personality of the most desired traits of the two parents may plausibly correspond to deep yearnings of the child. Either parent alone is inadequate in some respect; presents certain deficiencies. Mother is good and kind, but she is an alien to the boy’s world. Father has the potentialities of understanding companionship, but he is often gruff, impatient, and forbidding. But in the Ishmael Complex the boy projects his wish for one ideal, bisexual parent who will cherish him as a mother and adventure with him as a father. This coalescence of mother image and father image suggests that we have far underestimated the imaginative capacity of the child in manipulating the parent figures of his environment. The literature has made reference to either a father image or to a mother image or to both, but the possibility of a merging of these images in the child’s unconscious has not, to my knowledge, been adequately considered.

A comparative view of family patterns in the middle class and in the lower class will help explain the typical formation of the Ishmael Complex in middle-class boys and its absence, at least in the classical form we have been describing, in the lower-class boy. In the middle class both father and mother take their parental responsibilities seriously. While the greater burden may devolve upon the mother, the father is far from loath to participate in the problems of child-rearing. The middle-class American family is primarily equalitarian. In the lower class, however, the family is more matriarchal in form. The children are thought to belong to the mother (5) and the father plays little part in their upbringing. He may be viewed by the growing boy chiefly as an authoritarian or punitive figure; he is not the source of initiation into desired activities, and of helpmate in crisis situations, as found in the Ishmael Complex. Only the mother emerges as an image of bounteous love and interest. No constellation of the father as a ministering agent, consequently, is formed in the childhood of the working-class boy, and therefore, no basis is present in the prepubescent years for a substitute father image on the Ishmael order. Reinforcing this class difference in paternal role is the fact that maturity is earlier thrust upon the working-class boy, thereby shortening the period of his free fantasy life. Since he is permitted or even called upon to assume many of the rights and duties of the father’s role, he has less need of a substitute father ideal. (Such a broad generalization, of course, permits many exceptions; for example, the socially mobile working-class type of parents may manifest middle-class type parental attributes (20).)

Cross-cultural comparisons of the varying intensity and forms of the Ishmael Complex may provide a helpful supplement to the class comparisons already indicated within one society. Malinowski’s (22) testing of the Oedipus Complex in a variant social structure serves as the theoretical precedent for this task. Proceeding on the assumption that the Oedipus Complex involves certain interpersonal relations which are socially structured, Malinowski sought the variables in family organization and cultural patterns which were relevant to changes in behavior patterns. His procedure challenged Freud’s implicit assumption of constants in family relationships. Malinowski hypothecated the following essential variables—omitted by Freud—as relevant: the distribution of power within the family; the patterns of descent, inheritance, and succession; the residence of parents and children; and the transmission of skills. Since each one of these factors differed in the Trobriand Islands from its form in middle class Germany, Malinowski found corresponding differences in the nuclear complex. In the Trobriands the wish was not to kill the father and to sleep with the mother, but to kill the maternal uncle and to sleep with the sister.

Similarly, those factors of family organization and cultural patterns which are essential to the formation of the Ishmael Complex have already been indicated. When there are variations in these factors, we may expect to find corresponding variations in the form of the nuclear complex which we have designated as the Ishmael Complex. From our knowledge of the European, particularly the German, middle-class family, as described by Fromm (14) and others (28, 30, 12), we would not expect to find in Europe the Ishmael Complex in its American form. The patria potestas is still sufficiently strong in Europe to remove the father as a familiar protector and guide. He is more the coercive person whose commands are mediated through the mother. In contrast, the mother is all the more valued as loving and kind. In response to the more intense character of the relations of the child with the parents—fear, hate, and respect for the father; intense love for the mother—the more violent Oedipus Complex is formed.

In the American middle class, however, with less strong feelings between parent and child—less lavish, concentrated attention from the mother, and less awe vis a vis the father—a softer counterpart of Oedipus is manifested in the Ishmael Complex. Here, since the parental figures are less sharply distinguished in actual life, they may be more easily blended in unconscious fantasy. There is no need to eliminate the father either to gain exclusive possession of the mother or to remove an unduly burdensome yoke. The American middle class father is sufficiently permissive to be included in the libidinous wishes of his offspring. Instead the more gentle and tender constellation of the Ishmael Complex is formed wherein the boy lies wrapped in the sweet embrace of a combined mother-father image.

IV.

Up to this point no attempt has been made to account for the fact that the hero in the Ishmael legend is colored. Why should the masculine-feminine love myth be expressed through the medium of a colored person? Possibly this question may be answered by showing the striking parallel between the role of the colored outcaste in the myth and the dual role of the Negro in our society.5

To consider first the feminine aspect of this role, we may remark the many similarities in the personality traits with which our society invests both women and Negroes (25). Both are thought to be childlike, emotional, unsuited for intellectual work, morally undeveloped, all right in their proper places, easily understood but always unpredictable, primitive (that is, closer to nature and the lower forms of life), and, occasionally, blessed with homely wisdom (woman’s intuition) which transcends knowledge.

But coexisting with the linkage of women and Negroes in our ideology is the fact that strong masculine traits are ascribed to the Negro, deriving chiefly from skin color. The identification of darkness with masculinity is familiar to Americans. In paintings, advertisements, magazine illustrations, and commercial art, men’s skins are represented as several shades darker than women’s. A memorable example is found in the film “A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream” in which the sex difference between two dancers, archetypically masculine and feminine, is shown chiefly by color difference. In the stereotype gentlemen prefer blondes, and girls like their men tall, dark, and handsome. There is also the widespread belief in the superior virility of Negro men, evidenced chiefly in the notion that their genitalia are larger than those of whites (10).

Thus we may glimpse the social roots of the mythopeic bisexual creature who plays the role of “buddy and a little bit more” in the Ishmael Complex. For only in the Negro in our society are masculine and feminine attributes so strangely conjoined. It is appropriate, therefore, that the dream image of the Ishmael Complex be colored. But, moreover, his darkness also blends into the dual maternal-paternal role.

Attention has already been called to the maternal images suggested by the Ishmael Complex—Ishmael waking in the arms of Queequeg, Nigger Jim folding Huck Honey to his breast. Why is it that the gentle, cherishing maternal aspect of the dream lover seems peculiarly suited to a colored person? Here the analogous position of women and Negroes in our society again provides the clue. Psychoanalysis stresses feminine masochism as an important component in the character of the normal motherly woman (9). Women are said to be masochistic in love relationships, and, relevant to our argument, particularly so with their children. Initially, they derive enjoyment from mastering fear and pain in delivery, and throughout the child’s life they find pleasure in altruistic service to the child. While admitting the prevalence of masochistic attitudes even in modern women, sociologists may assert that such feelings are not biologically given, but arise from the social inferiority of women. If such be the case, we have the basis for understanding maternal, masochistic attitudes in Negroes. To the extent that the Negro accepts his social inferiority, he acquires the psychology of subservience and self-abnegating service. True, Negroes are less accommodated to their status today, and we may plausibly measure the incidence of the Ishmael Complex inversely with the extent of the Negro protest. Certainly at the time the childhood classics we are discussing were written, the figure of the “old-timey” Negro was not far from the truth, and lent support to the Ishmael myth of maternal solicitude from a colored man.

It may be objected that we have wandered too far afield in likening Negroes to women in explaining the maternal aspect of the Ishmael lover. Could it not derive directly from the experience of the white boy reader? He may himself have had a Negro nurse or an affectionate Negro servant. This more obvious explanation supplements, but does not contravene our earlier analogy with women.

Nor is the dark hue of the father-substitute inappropriate, for in our society the Negro also possesses many qualities which evoke a paternal image. Fatherly guidance and succor in the isolated barbaric scenes in which the Ishmael Complex is staged are indeed properly provided by a colored personage—for it is conventional to attribute to the Negro in our culture, even though he be born in Harlem, the most extraordinary capacities for coping with primitive challenges, whether in the forest depths, or along wild river banks, or even in far distant seas. Moreover, paternal strength is adequately portrayed in accordance with popular impressions of the Negro as muscular and long-limbed. Psychoanalysis also offers confirmation of the Negro as the symbolic equivalent of the father. Sterba (33) in his analysis of psychological factors in the Detroit race riot of 1946 cites several dreams of his white patients in which Negroes were identified as the dreamer’s father. To complete the parallel of Negro with father-substitute we should note instances of Negroes acting as teachers of whites in accordance with the mentor role of the colored companion, who occasionally initiates the lad of the Ishmael complex into adult skills and techniques.6

The final element of the Ishmael myth which we must relate to a colored protagonist is the homoeroticism of the Ishmaelic pair. The shyness and reserve of the middle class white boy is overcome by the more effusive and outgoing colored man. In our society the stereotype of the Negro shows him as less inhibited, more emotional and exuberant, more sensual, and even more given to sexuality than the white man. Consequently the white youth has less grounds for fearing a rebuff from a Negro than from a fellow white. The tender emotions of the Negro, being nearer to the surface—at least in popular thought—are more easily accessible. Thus we may understand the freely given warmth of a Queequeg or of a Nigger Jim to his white consort.

In support of the suitability of a colored person as the love object of a white person, paradoxically enough, is the conscious hatred and fear of Negroes felt by whites. Much has been made of the sexual envy of the Negro as a factor in discrimination. The psychoanalytical insight that the fear of sexual attraction often leads to overemphasis in rejection may be more significant in accounting for discrimination against the Negro than sexual envy. Prejudice is often felt most strongly toward those whom we feel may be worthy of love. McLean (21) has given an account of the unconscious physical bond between white and Negro in the South. The guild which results from debarring creatures who may be human from the area of affectionate regard may serve to erect more formidable barriers; the greater physical intimacy between whites and Negroes in the South which provides the social setting for erotic attachments may contribute significantly to southern conflicts.

We are not attempting to decide whether the Ishmael Complex accounts for actual discrimination against the Negro in our society, or whether such discrimination gives rise to the Ishmael Complex; although undoubtedly much of the foregoing is suggestive in either direction. Rather we leave in abeyance the question of the extent of the mutual influence upon each other of the attitudes toward the Negro in our society, on the one hand, and, on the other, the peculiar white boy-colored consort constellation of the Ishmael Complex.

V.

The reader who has observed the elaborate structure built upon the foundation of this alleged Ishmael Complex must not suppose that the writer is unaware of its tentative character. For the purpose of explicating all the refinements and implications of the Ishmael Complex it has been accepted as given. This myth postulates the desire of the white middle class boy for tender companionship with a colored friend in a primeval setting where they meet adventure together. The only evidence so far offered, however, has been the popularity of certain juvenile classics which have found a permanent place in our literature. But in view of the possible fruitful nature of this hypothesis in affording insight into social relationships and personality development, I have felt it important to indicate relevant subhypotheses in fullest detail. Were the Ishmael Complex to be empirically verified, our knowledge of American character and social structure would be immeasurably advanced.

The discussion of the Ishmael Complex has been predicated on the notion that it is only an hypothesis. Its validation must be left to future investigation.

The responsibility remains of suggesting the general lines along which testing techniques leading to the confirmation or rejection of the Ishmael hypothesis might proceed. An obstacle to the direct verification of the myth is its unconscious character. Depth psychology provides the only tool today for the direct discovery of unconscious materials. Here, then, the writer can only direct the attention of psychoanalysts to this problem. Other social scientists must rely on indirect methods of verifying unconscious wishes. Two possible objective techniques for the verification of the Ishmael concept are content analysis and attitude testing.

Content analysis represents a method of ascertaining the exact nature and relative strength of the stimuli contained in written materials as a basis for inferring the reader’s response to such stimuli. The method of content analysis would be employed to test the assumption that we can find in the books read in childhood symbols sufficiently precise to evoke in the reader the feelings and attitudes appropriate to the Ishmael situation, or, more concretely, a sufficient number of occurrences of ideal homoerotic relationships. It is apparent that content analysis has not been applied to the juvenile classics cited in this fashion, but only an impressionistic view has been taken. The first task might then be to subject such works as Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Leatherstocking Tales, etc. to content analysis in order to discover whether the components of the Ishmael Complex are indeed present in full force. Then the procedure of content analysis may be broadened to include other popular books for children, current as well as old. Finally, in order to test the assumption that a large number of boy readers have in fact been exposed to stimuli expressing the Ishmael myth, a rating of books according to the extent of the dominance of Ishmael factors should be correlated with their rating according to popularity.

There is, of course, the further problem of distinguishing between the reader’s manifest and latent responses to what he reads. His surface reaction to a given scene or a bit of dialogue may be negative, but can we take this response at face value? Perhaps his outward rejection conceals a secret craving. This problem is as old as psychoanalysis where the same behavior can be as plausibly interpreted in diametrically opposed ways. Therefore, the method of content analysis might not succeed in tapping unconscious evidence for the existence or non-existence of the Ishmael Complex. Lack of response to certain stimuli which the content analyst believes to be indicative of the Ishmael Complex may be genuine or it may represent a defense mechanism. This dilemma, which is present in the Ishmael Complex [and] is common with all allegedly unconscious wishes and fears, presents a problem for further study.

So far the suggested confirmation of the Ishmael Complex has been in a rather limited area: that is, by reference to the books read by young people—the line of evidence which originally suggested the prevalence and meaningfulness of the juvenile mythos. It remains to be discovered, by means of the technique of attitude testing, whether there is evidence in the general attitudinal systems of people which corresponds to the sentiments of the Ishmael situation. Although Freud cites as evidence of the Oedipus Complex the almost universal reactions of pity and fear to Sophocles’ drama Oedipus Rex, the case for Oedipal influence does not rest on literature. Contemporary psychologists, seeking confirmation of the Oedipus Complex, have turned to direct observation and to attitude questionnaires.

These two suggested techniques of content analysis and attitude testing suffer from the apparent limitation of being at second remove from the dynamic person. In the end the case for or against the Ishmael Complex will rest with the psychoanalyst who will find out whether analytic materials fit into the Ishmael pattern.

VI.

Throughout this article reference has frequently been made to the Ishmael Complex as an unconscious myth. In this concluding section the use of this term will be clarified, and the importance of the interpretation of myths to social science will be indicated. Myths represent the clearest mirror of people’s deepest wishes and anxieties. It was Freud who first saw in the myth a fantasy expressing, or perhaps concealing, unconscious motivations. He perceived that the powerful appeal of Oedipus Rex lay in its dramatization of the desires of childhood. In the same way it is possible to find in the juvenile classics we have mentioned the literary expression of a myth which corresponds to the hidden longings of the American boy.

By a myth may be understood the anagogic expression of some element in the value system of a social group, which ranges from wholly symbolic to wholly literal acceptance. Sociologists and anthropologists, of course, have dealt fully with problems of explicitly and concretely formulated value systems of groups, that is, those not in myth form.

More subtle analyses have pushed somewhat farther afield, and have considered those less articulate expressions of value systems, which also function as myths. Thus, for example, a keen observer like Georges Sorel, the political scientist, examined the phenomenon of the general strike in terms of its representing not so much a practical weapon for revolutionary overthrow of the established order by the organized proletariat, but rather as a myth—i.e., a symbolic representation of the most intense and ardent objective of the militant working class—which served the purpose of maintaining the organizational strength and fighting drive of the syndicalists in their daily struggles against capitalism. Other examples of powerful, motivating myths of this kind are the Holy Grail, redemption through Christ, the Soviet Union as a socialist society, and the like. The significance of such strong and persistent myths for the social scientist consists in their serving as a major force in social action which is generated by the rich, emotional attachment of the human mind to the imagery and symbolism of the myth.

But greater attention should be paid by social scientists to the completely submerged, metaphorical representations of social value systems—the unconscious myth—as exemplified in the Oedipus and Ishmael Complexes. The study and interpretation of such unconscious myths would serve to deepen our understanding of culture. The unconscious nature of these myths, however, requires sociologists and anthropologists to enlist the aid of psychiatry. There is little reason to suppose that the human mentality does not abound in other hidden unconscious myths besides the Oedipus and Ishmael Complexes, that exert as powerful an influence on human behavior as the conscious myths that exist in such profusion. This is an area of social exploration in which the psychiatrist and his techniques of analysis can play an important part.

Notes

1.   This theme is fully stated in Moby Dick (24) and Huckleberry Finn (36). Certain important features of the myth are found not merely in Two Years Before the Mast (4) and the five volumes of The Leatherstocking Tales (3): The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneer, and The Prairie, but also in Penrod (34) and Penrod and Sam (35), and in Robinson Crusoe, which were not cited by Fiedler. Books also containing elements of them, which, although lesser known, are held in high regard by children are to be found among those listed in such sources as Marie Rankin’s study (27) of the most popular children’s books in representative libraries in 1941; and in a similar study by W. W. Charters (2) of the recurrence in popularity of the same children’s books at ten-year intervals between 1907 and 1937. Among the works in Marie Rankin’s listing which contain significant elements of the theme being described appears The Pearl Lagoon (26). The theme emerges again in many of the works in Charters’ listing, including Jack Among the Indians (16) and The Last of the Chiefs (1).

2.   Testimony on this point is supplied by W. Allison Davis and Robert J. Havighurst (7), John Dollard (6), and Martha C. Ericson (11), among others. The case history of Chester in Davis and Dollard’s Children of Bondage (6) shows him as sacrificing lunches in order to buy a tailored suit. Cleanliness, good clothes, parentally-sanctioned associates, non-aggressive behavior, sexual inhibition, and, of course, education are important elements in the “middle class syndrome.”

3.   In addition to masculine “buddiness,” other sublimated forms of the Ishmael Complex may be noted. In some cases the wife is endowed with the masculine attributes which otherwise would be sought in male friends; the so-called partner role in marriage (19). In other cases a man may renounce entirely his claims for tenderness from the father and remain tied to his mother. Another variant is where the libidinal energy mobilized in the Ishmael Complex is redirected entirely to intellectual, artistic, political, or other pursuits.

4.   Karen Horney has frequently referred to the neurotic need for affection engendered by our competitive society. A significant factor in this neurotic craving may be the presence in large numbers of men of an unresolved Ishmael Complex.

5.   The question may be raised whether the terms “Negro” and “colored” are synonymous. Although the category “Negro” does not exhaust the category “colored,” the Negro both psychologically and statistically is taken as the symbol of the colored person in the United States.

6.   Some possibilities of evidence on this score are offered by Professor Arnold M. Rose of the University of Minnesota (29) who has suggested that the Negro may have taken a teacher role “…just after the civil War in the South when the greater body of skills were known to Negroes and the poor whites were learning them in order to take over the skilled workman jobs.”

References

Altsheler, Joseph A. 1912. The Last of the Chiefs. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

Charters, W. W. 1938. “Sixty-Four Popular Boys’ Books.” Library Journal 63: 399-400.

Cooper, James Fenimore. 1898-99. The Leatherstocking Tales (The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, The Prairie). Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

Dana, Richard Henry. 1936. Two Years Before the Mast. New York: Random House.

Davis, Allison, Burleigh B. Gardner and Mary R. Gardner. 1941. Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class. Chicago: U. of Chicago Press.

Davis, Allison and John Dollard. 1940. Children of Bondage. Washington, D. C.: American Council on Education..

Davis, Allison and Robert J. Havigburst. 1947. The Father of the Man. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

De Foe, Daniel. 1926. Robinson Crusoe. London: G. G. Harrap & Co.

Deutsch, Helene. 1945. The Psychology of Women; A Psychoanalytic Interpretation. New York: Grune and Stratton, Vol. 1, Chap. VII, “Feminine Masochism,” and Vol. 2, Chap. VII: “Delivery.”

Dollard, John. 1937. Caste and Class in a Southern Town. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, pp. 160-162.        

Ericson, Martha C. 1963. “Child Rearing and Social Status.” American Journal of Sociology 52(3): 190-192.

Erikson, Erik Homburger. 1942. “Hitler’s Imagery in German Youth.” Psychiatry 5: 475-493.

Fiedler, Leslie. 1948. “Come Back to the Raft Ag’in Huck Honey.” Partisan Review 15: 664-671.

Fromm, Erich. 1941. Escape from Freedom. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc.

Gorer, Geoffrey. 1948. The American People. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, pp. 125-132.

Grinnell, George B. 1900. Jack Among the Indians. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co.

Hellersherg, Elizabeth F. 1947. “Social and Cultural Aspects in Guidance Work and Psychotherapy.” The Am. J. Orthopsychiatry 17: 4.

Henry, George W. 1941. Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns, Vol. 1. New York: Paul B. Hober, Inc.

Kirkpatrick, Clifford. 1936. “The Measurement of Ethical Inconsistency in Marriage.” Intern. J. Ethics July: 444-460.

Lynd, Robert S. and Helen M. 1929. Middletown. New York: Harcourt, Brace Company.

McLean, Helen V. 1946. “Psychodynamic Factors in Racial Relations.” Ann. Am. Acad. Pol. Soc. Science 244: 165.

Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1927. Sex and Repression in Savage Society. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc.

Mead, Margaret. 1943. And Keep Your Powder Dry. New York: Morrow, pp. 41-49 and 80-98.

Melville, Herman. 1949. Moby Dick, or the Whale. New York: The Modern Library.

Myrdal, Gunnar. 1944. An American Dilemma. New York: Harper & Bros., Appendix 5 (pp. 1073-10), “A Parallel to the Negro Problem.”

Nordhoff, Charles. 1924. The Pearl Lagoon. Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press.

Rankin, Marie. 1944. Children’s Interests in Library Books of Fiction. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, p. 28.

Reich, Wilhelm. 1946. The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Translated by Theodore P. Wolfe. New York: Orgone Institute Press, p. 40-52.

Rose, Arnold M. Personal Communication.

Schaffner, Bertram. 1948. Father Land: A Study of Authoritarianism in the German Family. New York: Columbia University Press.

Sear, Robert R. 1947. Survey of Objective Studies of Psychoanalytic Concepts. New York: Social Science Research Council.

Seward, Georgene H. 1946. Sex and the Social Order. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., p. 158-161.

Sterba, Richard. 1947. “Some Psychological Factors in Negro Race Hatred and in Anti-Negro Riots,” Pp. 416-41 in Psychoanalysis and the Social Sciences, Vol. 1. International Universities Press.

Tarkington, Booth. 1920. Penrod. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co.

Tarkington, Booth. 1919. Penrod and Sam. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co.

Clemens, Samuel Langhorne (Twain, Mark). 1912. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York and London: Harper & Bros.

How Clergymen View Hippiedom

Helen M. Hacker Originally published 1970

In recent years the press has spotlighted two groups which are seeking to break out of traditional and spiritually outworn molds: modernizing clergymen and hippie youth. But there is a difference in their aspirations: the modernizing clergymen seek to become more worldly; the hippie youth, less worldly. The difference is well described by an American Methodist minister:

“Hippie religiosity takes some strange turns from the contemporary religious scene in terms of its ideas, values and practices. While avant-garde Catholics question a formalized liturgy employing a dead language, the hippies gather in public to recite Sanskrit prayers for hours. While earnest clerical reformers insist that nuns and priests must cast off their habits and wear ordinary clothing, the hippies parade in colorful symbolic clothing. While the young theologians and pastors talk about the necessity of bringing the church into the heart of secularized society, the hippies declare that society is corrupt and urge us to found little islands of holiness and peace. While Catholic radicals assert the virtues of clerical marriage, the hippies (though hardly celibate) accept implicitly the Roman church’s most telling argument for celibacy: that marriage domesticates and tames the dedicated man and narrows his vision. While the new theologians exhort Christians to turn their minds to the problems of an industrialized society, the hippies blithely pursue transcendent experiences.”

It is obvious that valuable insights can be gained by exploring the relationship between hippie groups and religious groups. Precedent for such exploration is not lacking. Thus Jay Haley, a family therapist and communications analyst, wrote in the Summer 1968 issue of Voices: “There are two comparisons of hippies with other groups which have been made. Psychiatrists, who were generally prejudiced against hippies, called them schizophrenics. Atheists, who were generally prejudiced against religion, called them Christians.” Haley cites examples of the consternation aroused in Christians by hippies and concludes: “Not only did hippies pose moral dilemmas to Christians but there was a crucial difference between their philosophy and either early or later Christians. The hippies did not judge others or set out to save other people by imposing their views upon them."

Churchmen also have taken official cognizance of the significance of the hippie movement for organized religion. At the symposium on “the culture of nonbelief,” sponsored in Rome in March 1969 by the Vatican’s Secretariat for Nonbelievers and the University of California’s department of sociology, Baptist Harvey Cox and Jean Daniélou, a French Roman Catholic theologian, agreed that hippie experimentation with oriental mysticism, drugs, and sex represents a search for belief outside the conventional forms, and that youthful protesters have lost faith in a dividend-gathering “true church” rather than in the Gospels.

I.

Thus it is understandable that my graduate class in research methods at Adelphi University decided to pursue the connection between clergymen and hippies. They wanted to find out whether ministers saw hippies as primitive Christians, to what extent they agreed with hippie philosophy, either wittingly or unwittingly, and whether ferment in youth could be related to ferment in the church. We constructed a questionnaire and mailed it, accompanied by a persuasive letter soliciting anonymous cooperation, to every clergyman listed in a directory for Nassau and Suffolk counties in Long Island, New York. In response to the 300 letters sent out, 107 usable replies were received. Testimony to the ministers’ concern is provided by the respectable rate of return and by the considered, eloquent responses to a final unstructured question which asked them to comment on the relationship of hippie ideas, values and practices to the Judeo-Christian tradition, and to say whether they felt the hippie movement upheld or threatened basic religious tenets.

The first part of the questionnaire was devoted to relevant background data—religious affiliation, size of congregation, number of years in the ministry, secular education, number and ages of children, and a self-rating on a scale from a traditional to a nontraditional position within their church. The second part consisted of statements comprising three scales: (a) what might be called the “hippiecratic creed” culled from their own mouths, (b) a secular or “social gospel” scale, and (c) a scale of mysticism. The third part compared ministers’ stereotypes of hippies with their images of divinity students, young fascists, young communists, and juvenile delinquents. In the fourth part respondees were asked to identify 15 personalities of chiefly hippie, religious, or political interest. The fifth part was the essay question described above.

II.

Perhaps our most interesting finding had to do with the cleavage between clergymen’s image of the hippies and their espousal of hippie values. Of the four comparison groups listed in the third part of the questionnaire, hippies were seen as most resembling juvenile delinquents in that they had mother-dominated childhoods and that they reject parental values, are not interested in politics, dress unconventionally, are sexually promiscuous, and are drug users. In all these respects they were seen as most unlike divinity students; the only trait they share with divinity students is, in the eyes of these clergymen, a middle-class background plus, to some extent, a college education. Hippies were seen as akin to young communists in preferring group to individual relationships. In short, they were viewed largely as middle-class delinquents.

Nevertheless, 90 percent of the Protestant ministers (and 87 percent of the total sample) endorsed such an item from the hippie-ethos scale as the contention that “young people should be encouraged to question contemporary social institutions.” In fact, 60 percent of the Protestants (and half of the total sample) agreed with ten of the 15 statements in this scale. These data suggest that negative ministerial perceptions of hippies refer more to what hippies practice than what they preach.

It has already been indicated that Protestants as a group are more favorable to hippie values than are either Catholics or Jews. It may be worthwhile to mention other characteristics associated with support of the hippie outlook. As might be expected, ministers who rate themselves as nontraditional were more likely to score high on the hippie-ethos scale. But this group proved to be more polarized than self-styled traditional ministers, with a higher percentage also low on the hippie-ethos scale; one may speculate, however, that the low-scoring non-traditional ministers reject the hippie philosophy as being too disengaged.

Ministers in the 40-60 age group were far more likely than their younger colleagues to score high on the hippie-values scale. Members of this group had more children between the ages of 15 and 24 (which we defined as the age of hippie vulnerability); the presence of hippie-age children was also discerned as predictive of placement in the high-scoring group. The question arises whether their scores may be attributed to generational or parental experiences; the data suggest that age is the more important consideration, since there was no difference in the proportion of clergymen with children and clergymen without children who scored high on the hippie scale. A greater percentage of high hippie-ethos scores was found among clergymen who have been in the ministry less than ten years and among those with 20 or more years of service; if this relationship should turn out to be stable, one might follow Durkheim’s speculations about the affinity between grandparents and grandchildren.

Larger size of congregation was positively associated with high hippie-ethos scores. One might argue that larger congregations pay higher salaries and can attract better-educated ministers—were it not for the finding of little relationship between education and hippie-ethos scores. A more plausible explanation (suggested also by a similar association of large congregation with a high secular scale score) is that congregations of fundamentalist and evangelical pastors tend to be small, frequently of the storefront variety. Ministers with high hippie-ethos scores were less likely to perceive hippies as being like juvenile delinquents, and more likely to see them as resembling divinity students.

III.

So far we have been concerned with ministers’ agreement or disagreement with propositions we have identified as congruent with hippie values, but which were not labeled as such on the questionnaire. How do these ministers express themselves when asked directly to comment on hippies? Analysis of the fifth (essay) part of the questionnaire reveals that one-fifth of the total sample are negative toward hippies; almost one-third have mixed feelings, but incline toward the negative; about one-fifth have mixed feelings, but incline toward the positive; a little more than one-tenth are unqualifiedly positive, seeing hippies as upholding basic religious tenets.

Ministers who lean more strongly to the negative criticize hippies in terms of private morality, stressing use of drugs, sexual promiscuity, avoidance of washing, and other departures from middle-class mores. The more positive group is more concerned with public morality, couching its criticism in terms of excessive romanticism, idealism, ahistoricity, apathy toward social action, and other characteristics which detract from the efficacy of hippies as a social force.

IV.

Let us consider a sampling of statements by those ministers who reject hippies as having nothing in common with the religious way of life—indeed, as threatening basic religious tenets:

“Theirs is a total revolt against the precepts as taught by the Bible... Their attitude and philosophy is an emphatic demonstration of the words of Scripture: ‘There is no more righteous, no not one. There is none that understandeth; there is none that seeketh after God.’”

“The hippies are parasites and contribute nothing to society nor to religion.”

“The hippies represent self-indulgence run wild.”

“Love, which is the basic Christian thought, is their reason for nonviolence. But love too is the reason for the freedom that they have in their sexual relations, lack of principles regarding their responsibilities, and evident disregard for authority...”

One quotation is typical of several which scored hippie lack of discipline as basically unchristian:

“...the man who calls himself a Christian must realize that the Bible uses that term only for those who are also ‘disciples.’ The root meaning of the term disciple is ‘discipline,’ and this precisely defines what hippiedom will have none of. The Christian is one who has yielded control of his life to God; a hippie most emphatically claims the right to direct his own life, and to ‘do his own thing.¼’ Hippies are a threat in that they have adopted drugs as a kind of pseudo-religious experience. Throughout history there has continually been some kind of counterfeit Christianity, which offers the thrill without the discipline, the fun without the responsibility. Perhaps some young people are, and will be, enthralled by this prospect as over against the proclamation of the gospel, which inevitably involves some harsh realities like self-denial... Should we say, then, that there are two extremes: the hippies, and the way of love and laughter; and Christianity, with its sobering demands and grim prospects? The New Testament is far from being a gloomy tirade—but only the one who tastes and sees that the Lord is good will be able to experience the joyful reality about which it speaks.”

Another view, while condemning hippies, points an accusatory finger at the church:

“Free love, unconventional dress, vulgarity, perversion, rebellion against authority and law, Bohemian style of life, and drug addiction characterize the ‘hippies.’ Perhaps the church is to blame in part for the creation of such a distressing situation among our youth of today—the church has long since lost its essential mission—to lift up Christ as the Savior... If the present hippie movement continues to spread, God have mercy on the next generation!”

More common was the notion that the hippie movement represents only one of the many currents which have rushed against the true rock of the church and then subsided, that it is only a passing fad. Said a traditionalist:

“There have been other movements that have come and gone... Christian morals and standards are taught in the Word and will remain, though part of our society violates the laws of God.”

In sum, these and other negative characterizations of hippies pictured them as lazy, indifferent to the necessity of making something useful out of their lives, irresponsible, indifferent to others, unable to delay immediate gratification, undisciplined, looking for an excuse for sexual liberties, unstable, escapist, tiresome, hedonistic, rootless, naive, self-centered, unrealistic, excessively concerned with self-fulfillment, inadequate, too negative, against everything, nonbelievers in authority, drug users, rebels, amoral, extremists, and pathetic.

V.

On the other hand, many ministers hailed the hippies as rejuvenators of Christian doctrine and as challengers to a materialistic, mechanistic, depersonalized, violence-prone society and to a hypocritical, provincial, irrelevant church:

“In our culture the hippie is a Judeo-Christian phenomenon out of the middle class... Hippies reflect the prophetic, the mystical. They seek authenticity and dig the phrase “the courage to be.” They are existential in mood, find ultimate being in the Now or responsiveness with love. They explore the margins of life, see the hypocrisy of the “over-age” generations. They would have been more open to Jesus and Jeremiah than would [today’s] average Christian, they would have been hostile in style to the Pharisaic and Priestly groups... They accept and seek to live basic implied ideals of the Judeo-Christian culture.”

“...the hippie movement is an attempt by some young people to find deeper values than those currently in vogue in American society. Their disdain of “material” goals, their seeking after “love, not war,” “peace,” “nature,” etc., all tend to uphold Judaic-Christian traditions rather than threaten them.”

Some ministers imputed a religiosity to hippies which they recognize as unintended by hippies themselves. The hippies, then, honor the Lord with their hearts, if not with their lips:

“They would choose to “threaten,” not “uphold,” religious tenets. But the reverse may be true. Their sensitivity, perceptivity, and method may actually revive the primitive spirit of the Judeo-Christian heritage.”

“The hippies “do” at times when some Christians merely content themselves with mouthing the ethic to love thy neighbor.”

“The great point which is made is not new, but it is important. It insists that the one absolute in guiding the choices one makes in his relationships with others is that our actions should be compatible with love—which is precisely what Jesus was saying 2,000 years ago.”

Frequently expressed was the view that hippies represent a return to primitive Christianity, that they may belong to God’s “invisible church” while appearing to threaten the established church and nominal Christians:

“In some cases the hippie embodies the oldest traditions of communal ideas and values…. The [movement] threatens the puritanic hangups of traditional pietism that was neither Christian nor pious to begin with. It is a call to reawakening, evaluating, perhaps restructuring worn-out clichés and structures.”

Who said it is wrong to challenge the status quo of organized religions? Perhaps the threat that the hippies present is good.

“The hippie movement is a particularly mid-20th century response to a set of circumstances that has been developing for centuries. It is not a threat to basic religious tenets, since it is most practically an outgrowth of them. It is, however, a threat to many ideas, values and practices that have grown out of the institutions [conventions] of the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

Some clergymen drew a parallel between the hippie movement and the monastic movement, but were critical of both as “copping out” on the social implementation of Christian values:

“Their withdrawal is like the monastic movement...their values [too] are departures from the Christian doctrine concern for one’s fellow man in love, shown through service to the needy and oppressed, partly through the structures of society and partly through reform of those structures. They just want to ‘cut out.’”

“The hippie movement is the modern monastic movement. Monks of the fourth century escaped the world, drank much beer, were not much concerned with others. But monasteries did provide the atmosphere for education, debate, art—and a flower bloomed.”

“Oddly enough, the conflict between the hippie and society would have been comprehensible to the medieval mind, which saw two distinct modes of the Christian life...the active and the contemplative... The hippie...speaks of dropping out of society in almost the same way that the monastics spoke of shunning the world; they are attracted to Eastern mysticism and they frankly assert that life reaches its highest moments in ineffable experiences which have virtually no relationship to ordinary human existence. The hippies preach the ancient message of Christian asceticism: withdrawal from the snares and corruptions of a hopelessly complex society and the embracing of a simple, frugal community life cemented by love. To be sure, hippie asceticism involves some notable omissions, especially sex and drugs.”

Hippies were also likened to the prophets, but in this comparison their disengagement was seen as a point of difference. For instance:

“While many of the basic concepts of the hippie movement seem to be based upon Judaic-Christian concepts, the basic difference [is] in its retreat from life. The leading men of the Bible, men like Moses, Joshua, David, Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, Jesus Christ, Paul, Peter, etc., were all very deeply involved with national life. Often they came into sharp disagreement with the Establishment, but their protest was not to “drop out.” Rather, they used all means at their disposal to bring about change in the thinking and attitudes of their day.”

It is difficult to resist quoting further from the articulate, often vivid appreciations of the hippie quest. As I have noted, the majority of the ministers were ambivalent in their evaluation of hippies. They tended to applaud the hippies’ idealism, simplicity, rejection of possessions, dedication to love and nonviolence, impatience with hypocrisy, skepticism in regard to any absolute truths or established dogmas, openness to new experiences and to non-Western religious outlooks, emphasis on the moral worth of individuals, and search for a more meaningful life. But at the same time they saw many flaws in hippie attitudes and practices. Perhaps their criticisms can best be summed up thus: hippies are too orphic and playful, are not sufficiently serious. If they were really serious, some of these ministers seemed to be saying, they would make their views meaningful by grounding them in some philosophical or theological system; lead self-disciplined lives in accordance with their avowed values; become actively engaged in reshaping the world closer to their heart’s desire, in organizing love; not turn their backs on all existing structures, such as the church, but make selective use of them while working for change; and see their lives as related to the past and having consequences for the future.

Whether they praised or sorrowed over the hippies, most of the ministers agreed that their challenge to church, family, and society is salutary and should stimulate hard thinking about the real meaning of religious tenets. On the whole, there was recognition of hippies as intrinsically Christian and sympathy for their spiritual search, though often accompanied by a feeling that they are misguided in the path they are following—or, as one minister put it: “Their lifestyle does not effectively produce the freedom, beauty, truth, and love which they are actually seeking.” Finally, there was hope that the hippie prick to conscience will be felt:

“Much of their protest against phony middle-class suburban values is quite valid, and we need to take it seriously as a call for love, justice and freedom.”

“Perhaps their revolt may have some benefit if it makes us take a good hard look at our lack of understanding of and involvement in our own faith.”

“As long as the hippies remain visible and vocal, they serve as a constant reminder that certain things are not dead; e.g., the meaning of life, the nature of personality, the attainment of the Absolute, the possibility of other modes of existence besides those followed in everyday life. The hippie visibility forces those in the Judaic-Christian tradition to wrestle with their preachments, and to maintain within their communions the metaphysical dialogue which points to something beyond social engineering or pietistic platitudes.”

Postscript

Heather McLaughlin, Kyle Green, and Christopher Uggen

When a scholar’s insights grow to become taken-for-granted knowledge about the social world, she has attained real success. We prepared this volume with the hope and expectation that others will enjoy reading and remembering Helen Hacker as much as we have. She made absolutely fundamental contributions to the way sociologists, other scholars, and the public understand social relations in gender, sexuality, family relations, and other fields.

Some of her writing from the 1950s and 1970s is so fresh that it would be at home in a journal of 2018. Other writing, of course, is more a product of its time. Such is the fate of sociologists who write for five decades and are likely to be read for at least five more. Helen would welcome critique and argument. As her family takes care to remind us, Aunt Helen’s motto was, “why be difficult, when you can be impossible!”

Helen Hacker

Heather McLaughlin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Oklahoma State University. She studies gender inequality in work, sport, and law, with a particular emphasis on adolescence and young adulthood. Her research has appeared in academic journals such as American Sociological Review, Gender & Society, Law & Society Review, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, and The Sociological Quarterly. She is also passionate about public sociology, writing and blogging about sexual harassment in outlets like LSE Business Review, Pathways Magazine, and Harvard Business Review.

Kyle Green is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at The College at Brockport, State University of New York.  He received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Minnesota in 2015 and M.A. in Geography in 2008. Green researches physical practice, storytelling, intimacy, and the body with a particular emphasis on how groups construct meaning. His work has appeared in journals such as Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Social & Cultural Geography, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Qualitative Sociology, and International Review for the Sociology of Sport. Kyle co-produces and co-hosts the Give Methods a Chance podcast, and co-authored a text of the same name.

Christopher Uggen is Regents Professor and Martindale chair in Sociology and Law at the University of Minnesota. He studies crime, law, and social inequality, firm in the belief that good science can light the way to a more just and peaceful world.