those who are ideologically committed to the discrimination of women as God-
given or fixed by nature. Until well into the 20th century, conservative men, but
by no means only men, regularly invoked nature to legitimize unequal treatment
of women in political and economic life. But as the insight gained ground that
natural differences between the sexes are moulded by social gender roles, a
fundamental review of the established order became possible. Gender identities
were now seen as partly given, partly made.
However, it wasn’t just advancement in our knowledge or the success of the
Women’s Liberation Movement that drove change in the direction of more
equality. Gender roles interact with other social conditions. In the Western world,
the homemaker–breadwinner division of labour along gender lines was for a
long time economically functional, and thus rarely contested. But as coincident
with progressing industrialization and the expansion of the service sector the
female labour participation rate increased (Figure 8), the objective measure of
gender-specific wage differentials brought the unequal treatment of men and
women into the spotlight, giving rise to the feminist critique.
- Female labour force participation in early industrial countries over time.