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397 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. ix (1971)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0397 and id is 1 raw text is: INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this issue of THE ANNALS is to consider seven public questions
on which there are, or recently have been, strong views pro and con. Other ques-
tions of importance exist which could have been included. There is no intention
to dismiss them out of hand. But as this issue was conceived, the seven here
presented appeared to be commanding the greatest public interest.
Between the conception and completion of this volume everyone was surprised
by the stunning rapidity with which 18-year-olds were enfranchised. All opposi-
tion in and out of Congress collapsed like a pricked toy balloon. First the Con-
gress and then the Constitutional Amendment process by the states broke all
records in proving that our slow-moving democratic machinery can gear up for
swift action when there is an atmosphere of consensus. Perhaps there is a lesson
here for the impatient who have given up on the system.
Now, the subject of interest-to politicians in the first instance, and to political
scientists in the second-is what youth is going to do, if anything, with its vote.
Here, perhaps, is the only remaining point of the question still subject to some
controversy. From his Washington observer perch, Robert Roth thinks politicians
are going to have to talk a new language because old labels such as conservative
and liberal have become meaningless.
Louis M. Seagull's studies also lead him to believe in change. He foresees that
the current crop of campus radicals, unlike their forefathers, is not going to be
tamed by age and family responsibilities. Education rather than age, Seagull be-
lieves, is going to be the determining factor in voting behavior. He predicts a
forthcoming period of lively American politics in which the independent voter
will unsettle the established parties.
Male opponents in the academic world of the Women's Liberation Movement
seem to have run for cover. One would not conclude from the paper by Karen T.
Romer and Cynthia Secor, however, that this means Women's Lib has won a
smashing victory in the manner of the youth vote. Since the conference at the
University of Pennsylvania, to which the authors refer, more complaints by women
faculty members of several leading colleges and universities of discriminatory
practices in hiring, promotion, salary levels, tenure, and so on have been filed with
the federal government.
Romer and Secor concern themselves mainly with the academic world, but they
also look into the loneliness of women in all professions who find themselves cut
off from many satisfactions of human interaction and made to feel peculiar.
The ultimate goal of Women's Lib, as they see it, is an androgynous community
in which roles are not assigned according to gender. The problem they pose for
male and female academicians is one of accommodating the existing masculine
ideology, institutions, and behavior patterns to the emerging feminine definition of
culture.
Joan Mandle looks at Women's Lib more from the angle of the home than the
professions. Overall, Mandle finds in Women's Lib the objective of eliminating
the low status and unrewarded tasks ascribed to women in modern society. The
solution would involve husbands and children. The home roles of women would
ix

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