Sex-Role Identification and Success

AUTHORS SEDERER AND SEIDENBERG address a difficult issue in attempting to spell out the influences of society on the ego ideal, and the ways in which the ego ideal, in turn, affects aspirations

in women. The major points in this paper have been verified by current research (Horner, 1972) ; (Dalsimer, 1975) and clinical evidence. Emphasis on the current struggle for work equality in political and social terms can obscure a particular woman's internal conflicts about success; achievement may be conflicted even in externally optimal situations; women, more often than men, fear and avoid achievement.

We also agree with the authors' implication that there may be a lag between the ideal self and the psychological wherewithal to actualize this ideal in one's own life. This discrepancy can exist between a woman's goals and behavior or between her behavior and her experience of self. Thus, an individual woman may be competent in her career, but she may or may not experience herself as equal to men. Even a professionally successful woman may not be able to dispel the sense that she is inferior.

In the course of developing their ideas, the authors make a number of points with which we disagree. In our view, many of the central issues relevant to the question of sex-role identification and achievement have been oversimplified. In setting down some of our thoughts on the matter, we were repeatedly impressed with the difficulty of determining how the expectations of society are integrated into the intrapsychic life of individuals. Drive strength, biological predispositions, life history, as well as social values bear on the problem.

• 1In emphasizing the oppression which women have suffered, the authors seem to ignore the fact that both men and women are part of the same social system and that each operates out of expectations that are in some ways complementary. As the system changes, there will be new prerogatives and new demands for both sexes.

• 2The authors make unwarrant