ABSTRACT
In industrial societies, it used to be that a woman would be asked what her husband does for a living. Now, increasingly, men are being asked what their wives do. Behind that small switch lies an important social revolution, a revolution in sex roles. This chapter discusses some salient aspects of that revolution and its consequences. The first and greatest change the Industrial Revolution made that affected sex roles was to shift the locus of work from the home to somewhere else. The Industrial Revolution, by systematically separating the workplace from the home, destroyed for the first time in human history the direct division of labor between husband and wife. Beginning at an extremely low level in 1890, the first date for which we have good information, US wives under age 60 have steadily increased their participation in the labor force, regardless of age, race, or parenthood.
