ocial roles. Certain gender roles have become accepted in American society, and when those roles begin to change, tensions ensue as people react to the change as some sort of challenge to all they have believed in and accepted over time. The idea has long prevailed that women's place is in the home, and yet since World War II the pace at which women have been entering the workforce has only accelerated. The workplace has not responded well for most of the past fifty years. women have been discriminated against in hiring, in rate of pay, in advancement, and by being made the target of various forms of harassment. The women's movement has brought considerable change to the workplace by challenging stereotypes, taking legal action against offenders, and other actions.
Dorothy E. Smith notes that women's inequality begins with the family, the primary social unit in our society, and the place where gender differences are often heightened:
Although it is a serious oversimplification to treat the family as the sole basis of women's inequality, it is the social organization of women's labor in the home and outside and the relations between the two which are women's inequality.
A film such as Kramer vs. Kramer brings this issue to the forefront while at the same time demonstrating how the new reality affects the male role as well as the female role in both the family and the home. Mr. Kramer is expected to work and support his family. Mrs. Kramer is expected to keep the house, raise the children, and generally stay home. Historically, women who work outside the home have been expected to serve a dual function, continuing to behave as if housekeeping were their primary vocation, while work outside the home was secondary as an avocation. This began to change when technology provided the means for women to do both jobs on a more equal basis--but women still had to do both jobs:
What we have discovered since the end of World W...