Dilemmas of Masculinity: A Study of College Youth

In Dilemmas of Masculinity, noted sociologist Mirra Komarovsky turns her attention to the consequences of feminism among women on the lives of men. As she'd documented in Women in the Modern World, and would again in Women in College, women's lives had changed enormously in the thirty-plus years Komarovsky taught at Barnard College. Women now are able to own their intelligence without apology, and most of the women had career aspirations that were equal to the men across the street at Columbia. In fieldwork conducted with Columbia College seniors in 1969-1970, she continually found that women's newly claimed freedoms, however, sat uneasily on men who had been raised in traditional homes. On the one hand, they respected women's intellectual achievements and even welcomed women's career aspirations. The campus ethos "demanded that men pay at least lip service to liberal attitudes towards working wives," Komarovsky wrote in an article based on the research. On the other hand, they didn't want to sacrifice any of the privileges they had been taught to expect - that their wives would do virtually all the child care and housework. As a result, the men were utterly unprepared for the new world of gender equality that women were beginning to demand.