WOMEN OF THE YEAR: Great Changes, New Chances, Tough Choices

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promotions in the new competition.

Indeed, the gravest difficulties of the women's movement are now economic: How can women find equality in jobs if the jobs are not there? Equality may be possible only in a fairly rapidly growing economy. Lacking that, justice may require a greater reordering of the old sex roles, with men assuming more of the domestic workload as women move into the job world. Such a reordering will be difficult to achieve, but for men—as well as women—the psychological advantages could be enormous.

Women in their dependence have always exacted a price in the guerrilla war of the sexes. Philip Wylie's devouring Mom of 30 years ago or Alexander Portnoy's horrific mother or countless wives and mistresses of fancy and fact were really figures of thwarted womanhood, exacting an understandably neurotic revenge. Women's liberation, while it thrusts women into a new world of difficult choices and questions of identity, should ultimately accomplish much for the sheer sanity of both men and women. In any case, as Addie Wyatt says, "All we're asking is that we be recognized as full partners—at home, at work, in the world at large. Is that too much?"

The drama of the sexes remains—the Old Adam and the New Eve. As 1976 begins, the plot and characters are changing—for the better of both.