The gender question and the study of Jewish children

Although some researchers argue that a generation of feminist innovations and changes in American Jewish life has produced an egalitarian generation in which gender differences among Jewish children and adolescents are insignificant, this article argues that the salience of gender differences is a factor of the kinds of questions that children are asked by researchers. When the question of gender was explicitly posed to 67 Jewish children, subtle differences did emerge. Jewish girls were found to be more sensitive to issues of equal rights and sexism, more ambivalent about their proper roles, and more aware of the contributions of Jewish women than boys.