An Unfinished Revolution

Abstract

After many decades of feminist activism, the is incomplete. Feminist gains have spawned an ongoing backlash (Douglas 2010; Faludi 1991/2006), and as England (2010) notes, the pace of change for women has slowed in many spheres. Given the tension between the feminist movement and the anti-feminists who have galvanized against it, it is unsurprising that the movement's gains have been unevenly paced, showing swift progress in some areas and slower progress in others. It is thus also unsurprising that a sociologist who has studied throughout her career would describe the progress of the gender revolution as uneven and identify some aspects as stalled. What has been surprising to some, however, are the explanations for this that Paula England (2010) proposed in her SWS Feminist Lecture The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled. This symposium includes responses to this argument from other scholars on the front lines of the revolution. What is clear from all of the responses is that England's piece has served as a catalyst for a vital conversation that promises to advance research about women's opportunities and changes in the system. Paula England's contributions to feminist sociology and research have been profound. Her books and articles have been cited in thousands of publications and have shaped the direction of research in gender, work, and family. Early on, her work critiqued human capital and neoclassical economic theories of women's wages and of occupational segregation (e.g., England 1982, 1984) and pointed to the role played by demand-side factors such as discrimination (England 1985). She has analyzed the devaluation of women's work and the implications for pay equity (England 1992) and has contributed cutting-edge scholarship on segregation and earnings inequality. Attention to families has been a component of her work throughout her career, par ticularly as families relate to employment (e.g., England and Farkas 1986). In short, any sociologist who studies gender, work, and family must take