Women and Men

In preparing this Special Issue on Men, the Editors had planned to include a substantive paper on men's relationships with women as they have been affected by recent psychosocial changes. It soon became apparent that a single paper could not do justice to the vastness and importance of the subject. A more fitting format appeared to be a symposium in which a diversity of views could be brought to bear. Moreover, it was felt that these writers should be women, since most of the papers were written by men. Accordingly, psychiatrist-psychoanalyst Carol Nadelson, sociologists Nancy Chodorow and Mirra Komarovsky, and psychoanalysts Esther Menaker and Ann Belford Ulanov, were asked to write short contributions to the following statement:

During the past 25 years, the feminist movement and other cultural trends have wrought changes in the private and public lives of women. The continuing impact of these processes upon woman's self-image and the nature of her psychology is yet to be assessed. From the point of view of your professional work and your personal experience, what effect do you think these events have had on the relations between men and women?