The Gender Role Conflict Literature: Fruits of Sustained Commitment

Twenty-five years ago, when the men’s movement was in its beginning stages, O’Neil recognized the importance of understanding more about the impact of men’s gender role conflict. This ensuing quarter century of research has produced a much more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of gender role conflict than we had then. In his integrative review, O’Neil provides an excellent illustration of programmatic research and the power of sustained commitment to a construct. Clearly we continue to have a great societal need to understand more about men’s roles and how conflicts in this important arena affect our society as well as cultures around the world. The breadth and depth of the accumulated knowledge that addresses these important soci-etal needs is remarkable. The lack of research on gender role conflict in the workplace is striking and merits additional attention. Additional methodological and theoretical complexity holds much promise to stimulate future research directions to enhance understanding of gender role conflict within the many complexities of men’s lives. THE POWER OF PROGRAMMATIC RESEARCH The second wave of feminism that swept the country in the 1960s and ’70s not only brought dramatic changes to the lives of women but also pro-moted men’s reflection about the role of gender in their own lives. How is the social construction of gender understood and lived by men, and how does it serve to enhance or diminish men’s well-being and psychological health? O’Neil, in many ways, is one of our early pioneers in his recogni-tion of the importance of understanding gender role conflict in men’s lives (e.g., O’Neil, 1981). In 1986, he and his colleagues published the seminal article on the Gender Role Conflict Scale (GRCS; O’Neil, Helm, Gable, David, & Wrightsman, 1986). Since the early 1980s, he has had a sustained focus on gender role conflict with the GRCS. During this time, he has consistently maintained a thoughtful, creative, and illuminating research program with the GRCS himself, as well as generously facilitating the research of other scholars who were interested in using the GRCS. For example, he has meticulously compiled and categorized the GRCS studies on his Web sit