THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN: A COMMON EUROPEAN CONCERN

The true emancipation of women should become a common European concern and a common European goal. Emancipation means that no socio‐cultural or biological constraint should prevent women from obtaining the same chances and opportunities as men. True emancipation, which is still a distant objective in most of the European countries, implies that access to professional life should not have to be paid for by an exhausting cumulation of domestic and professional roles. A recent research programme on the student population of the University of Geneva provides data which are relevant in this respect. Female students are less likely to have internalized norms of behaviour which facilitate adaptation to a competitive environment in which women have to compete with men. Being subject to cross pressures and torn between two sets of behavioural norms, young women are often ambivalent in their attitudes. The conclusions of the Geneva research are consistent with other research results in other countries. The major explanatory factor is early socialization. True emancipation of women requires a long‐range education policy aiming at gradually reducing the differences in the socialization patterns of boys and girls.