Daedalus Fall 1987 [antikvár]

Preface to the Issue, "Learning About Women: Gender, PoUtics, and Power'" IT IS ALMOST A QUARTER OF A CENTURY since DcedaluS published its Spring 1964 issue entitled "The Woman in America," including articles by Erik Erikson and David Riesman, Alice Rossi and Edna Rostow, Esther Peterson and Lotte Bailyn, Jill Conway and Joan Erikson.^ Subsequent hardcover and paperback book editions, edited by Robert J. Lifton, also included essays by Diana Trilling and David McClelland. "The Woman in America," emerging when it did, had an enormous resonance. As the subject of a retrospective article written for this issue by Carl N. Degler (who also wrote for the original Dcedalus study), it describes a world both familiar and strange. Degler's observations in "On Rereading 'The Woman in America' " suggest how substantial the changes have been since 1964, and why an ideological revolution, which he himself did not predict, has been so influential. While substantial political, social, and economic transformations have certainly taken place in the period between 1964 and the present, it is possible to exaggerate their depth and to believe that they have eradicated all inequities. The truth, in fact, is more complex; while there have been major advances, there have also been significant setbacks. The American political and social environments have been hospitable to a concern with equal rights for some time now, and the condition of women in American society has improved substantially since 1964. But the criteria used for judging that condition have also changed, and this, in time, may be seen as the most significant development of the period.