May 4-5, 2007

By Molly Monahan Lang, Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology, Social Work, and Criminal Justice, Bloomsburg University; mlang@bloomu.edu; 216.577.7527; and Barbara J. Risman, Professor and Head of Sociology, University of Illinois at Chicago; brisman@uic.edu; 312.996.3005

After over 35 years of continuous change toward more egalitarian gender attitudes and behaviors, recent signs of a slowdown have led some observers to suggest that the gender revolution is coming to an end.  Evidence for this claim includes a slight dip in women's labor force participation, a rise in support for traditional gender attitudes among adults, and an increase in the age of sexual initiation among the young.  In the past year, the Council on Contemporary Families has received many enquiries from the press and general public about whether the transformation of men's and women's roles has now run its course.

In a review of this question prepared for the Tenth Anniversary Conference of CCF, we conclude that these short-term countertrends do not amount to a revival of traditional family roles and beliefs.  Instead, we show that the evidence overwhelmingly shows an ongoing shift toward what we call "gender convergence," an ever-increasing similarity in how men and women live and what they want from their lives.