Gender Roles in a HalfSquare World, Part I

by Chris Savage
August 18, 2006

I have to confess that, these days, I'm not sure who is more conflicted about gender roles, men or women. I'm not talking about our parents' generation. For the most part, they have settled into a comfortable give-and-take between the sexes. Nor am I talking about young people, twenty-somethings and below. They, too, seem to be easing into a certain gender detente where boys and girls, men and women, are more or less emotional and sexual equals and nobody is expected to assume this or that particular role.

No, I'm talking about the generation of the HalfSquares. This is the generation caught between the distinct gender roles of our parents and the mostly blurred lines of our kids. Both the men and women of this generation are walking question marks, uncertain about what they can expect and what is expected of them.

There are many reasons for the uncertainty people our age experience. What's unique about our generation is that a nearly perfect storm of influences came together during our adolescence, primarily during the 70s, a storm that dramatically affected how all of us view women's roles in our society.

First, the so-called women's liberation movement hit its stride during our teen-aged years. It was during this time of social upheaval that we boys and girls first began to notice each other. But the ideas emerging from the feminist movement shaped our views of men's and women's roles in new ways. Women no longer considered themselves as "the weaker sex" and they most certainly did not want men to see them in that way.

On the heels of the women's lib movement came the legal advances of Title IX legislation. Now, instead of sitting on the sidelines, cheering on the boys with pom-poms and short skirts, the girls our age were competing in sports of their own. I was in the fifth grade in Ypsilanti, Michigan when Carolyn King, at age 12, became the first girl, not only in our city but in the whole country, allowed to openly play baseball in the Little League. They even made an After School Special about her.

The economic realities during our early teen years saw many families no longer able to subsist on one income. More and more our mothers were entering the workplace. Although they were certainly at a disadvantage compared to the men they worked with, their at least partial emancipation from economic dependence had a profound effect on the influential women in our lives.

Finally, the popular media of the 70s and 80s began, for the first time, to focus on strong women characters. From Wonder Woman and the Bionic Woman to Gloria Bunker, from Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda Morgenstern to Hot Lips Hoolihan, women were being depicted as intellectually and economically independent, sexually liberated and powerful. This was a far cry from the June Cleavers of our parents' days.

While these cataclysmic changes regarding women's roles in America were occurring, the role of men was equally changing. Now, instead of being the breadwinner, men were being asked and even required to participate in the rearing of their children as well. Without women relying on them almost completely for their financial needs, men now found themselves in a less paternal role. This had large implications on their romantic and sexual lives and in nearly every other area in their relationships with women. Even the media was depicting men in a new, less aggressive and even less masculine fashion. From Columbo to Welcome Back, Kotter and Three's Company, how men were portrayed in the media was shifting in noticeable and important ways.

Next month I'll delve into the impact this perfect storm of the 1970s has had on the HalfSquare generation and how our confused gender roles are playing out in our relationships with each other. See you then.