ABSTRACT
In grounding intertheory studies of cognitive performance, four cross-nationally reliable conceptual styles arose, one of them, the Flexible style, being dominated by women (Cohen 1989). Women's modes of cognition and derivative personalities, learned in recipient roles in gender-based relationships, their "self" concepts and "referent others," their value systems, and their concepts of power and justice differ systematically from the Analytic conceptual style used as the male industrial model. The historical dominance of services by women carriers of the Flexible style has defined service occupations according to that style. Given the emergence of postindustrial service industry dominance in the employment market, the characteristics of the Flexible style are seen, thus, in aggregate, as potent definers of the directions of postindustrial culture. These gender-based characteristics are outlined below; they are related to women's political and labor-market integration and its impact on the emergent American culture.
