ABSTRACT
All the available research evidence shows that, even by the 1990s, the majority of women in Britain, and across Europe more generally, did not seek continuous lifetime careers but continued to give priority, to varying degrees, to family activities. Policies for the 21st century thus need to recognise, and permit, this diversity of sex-role preferences and family lifestyles instead of seeking to impose one single model on everyone. A substantial proportion of women, as well as men, accept the sexual division of labour which sees homemaking as women's principal activity and income-earning as men's principal activity in life. Policy development in the European Commission is based on the premise of rapid convergence on the egalitarian model of the sexual contract. Attitude surveys have presented people with a false dichotomy which failed to recognise the modem version of the sexual division of labour, a compromise that stops a long way short of truly egalitarian attitudes.
