g formerly male dominions and men finding new ways to relate to and function in the family unit.
Gender can be defined as a social identity consisting of the role a person is to play because of his or her sex. There is a diversity in male and female roles, making it impossible to define gender in terms of narrow male and female roles. Gender is culturally defined, with significant differences from culture to culture. These differences are studied by anthropologists to ascertain the range of behaviors that have been developed to define gender and on the forces at work in the creation of these roles. The role of women in American society was conditioned by religious attitudes and by the conditions of life that prevailed through much of American history. The culture of Europe and America was based for centuries on a patriarchal system in which exclusive ownership of the female by a given male was considered important, with the result that women were relegated to the role of property with little or no voice in their own fate.
It is clear that for most of history women were expected to be content with a certain sort of life and were trained for that purpose. Clearly, circumstances of family life have changed in the modern era. Industry has been taken out of the home, and large families are no longer economically possible or socially desired. The home is no longer the center of the husband's life, and for the traditional wife there is only a narrowing of interests and possibilities for development: "Increasingly, the woman finds herself without an occupation and with an unsatisfactory emotional life". The change in sex roles that can be discerned in society is closely tied with changes in the structure of the family. C
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