Demographic foundations of new sex roles.

Increased life expectancy and widening sex differentials in mortality in modern society are producing changes in the population distribution by age and sex that have wide implications for the relations between men and women. The changes give rise to a surplus of females at old ages. Because men customarily marry women younger than themselves female surpluses among the older unmarried population are extremely large. Policy measures to reverse the age gap at marriage are implausible. Instead social responses to the situation take the form of unconscious adaptations in sex roles including a lessening of the importance of marriage for women and efforts to eliminate any sex-based division of labor. (authors) (summaries in ENG FRE SPA)