ABSTRACT
In her incisive book The dialectic of sex, Shulamith Firestone offered a radical feminist analysis of the oppression of women—along with even more radical solutions. She envisioned a feminist future in which reproduction would be separated from both sexuality and gender: conception would happen through artificial insemination and gestation would take place in artificial wombs in carefully controlled environments. The association of women with motherhood strengthens gender stereotypes that emphasize caring and "softness" as opposed to the competence and decisiveness expected of public leaders and high-achieving workers. Predicting the future of gender relations, in a world where those relations are in flux, is speculative. Yet there are signs that the strict definition of gender roles with respect to family and work has eroded dramatically. Social change is an uneven and sometimes frustrating process—and its results are rarely unequivocally positive. Some people fear that blurring the distinctions among genders causes confusion and threatens social stability.
