Dilemmas of Masculinity

the long version

"In Dilemmas of Masculinity, sociologist Mirra Komarovsky turns her attention to the consequences of feminism on the lives of men. As she documented in Women in the Modern World and again in Women in College, women's lives have changed enormously in the more than thirty years that Komarovsky taught at Barnard College. Women now are able to own their intelligence without apology, and most of the women have career aspirations that are equal to those of the men across the street at Columbia. However, in fieldwork conducted with Columbia College seniors from 1969 to 1970, Komarovsky continually found that women's newly claimed freedoms sat uneasily with men who had been raised in traditional homes. On one hand, men respected women's intellectual achievements and even welcomed women's career aspirations. The campus ethos "demanded that men at least pay lip service to liberal attitudes toward working wives," Komarovsky wrote in an article based on the research. On the other hand, men did not want to sacrifice any of the privileges they had been taught to expect in having a wife who was solely a homemaker. As a result, men were utterly unprepared for the new world of gender equality that women were beginning to demand."--BOOK JACKET.