ABSTRACT

Women can exert political pressure in segmental roles as consumers, workers, New Yorkers, or the aged; but not as a cohesive political group based on sex solidarity. Age and sex are the earliest social categories an individual learns. Sex role expectations tend to remain a stubborn part of our impulse lives. As a result of early sex-role socialization, there is bound to be a lag between political and economic emancipation of women and the inner adjustment to equality of both men and women. Since women typically live in greater intimacy with men than they do with other women, there is potential conflict within family units when women press hard for sex equality. In the case of sex, the pluralist model posits the necessity of traditional sex role differentiation between the sexes on the grounds of fundamental physiological and hence social differences between the sexes.