ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents an overview of key concepts covered in the preceding part III chapters of this book. The intensification of contacts across many domains, from consumerism to human rights efforts to growing trade connections, obviously had more impact on gender patterns. One of the great changes in modern world history-though a change still incomplete: the growing replacement of traditional patriarchal arrangements with greater interaction and equality between men and women. Gender standards and goals still varied regionally, for, as before, contacts assimilate into different local pattern. The ongoing development of women's education or political roles would no longer be a response to the West, but part of a larger process of regional adaptation. In 1960s, the roles women gained in the Soviet Union-serving, for example, in space exploration-might challenge Western countries that preferred, inaccurately, to think of Soviet women only in terms of dowdy fashions and male dominance.
