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A theory of the status of women is presented which draws primarily on ecological and economic factors and posits a relationship between female production and female status. It was hypothesized that female contribution to subsistence activities would be a function of certain ecological factors and/or a prolonged drain of male labor. It was found that these factors were related to female production activities. A scale of female status was then derived from a small pilot sample and correlated with female contribution to subsistence. The results indicated that female production is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the development of female status

The purpose of this paper is (1) to describe and explain variation in the psychological reality of American‐English kinship terms; and, (2) to examine the relationship between results obtained by two approaches which have been used to find psychologically real definitions of American‐English kinship terms. A general hypothesis is proposed which accounts for variation in psychological reality in terms of life cycle and certain social role variables, as well as the individual's experiential knowledge of the domain under study. This hypothesis was accepted after it was revised to include the mediating influence of the content of what is stored in memory. The data for this study were collected in a U.S. urban poverty environment.

This research applies the information‐processing theory of human thinking to an analysis of the psychological reality of American‐English kinship terms. A general model in terms of cognitive structure and process is presented, its theoretical development closely tied to experimental testing. Two tasks involving the manipulation of terms of reference were administered to a sample chosen on the basis of subcultural affiliation; from the resulting data inferences are drawn about how kinship terms are structured in memory. Finally a classification of cognitive structure is presented and compared to the componential model of the componential analyst.

The assumption that the poor constitute a subsociety with a homogeneous subculture is examined empirically in an urban poverty sample. The existence of subcultural differences in the sample was tested by using a number of criteria that have been suggested for classifying cultural systems. The data indicate that for the sample studied there are two subcultures–one Black and one White. A hypothesis for the development and persistence of subcultural variations is proposed. The research which is reported and that which is suggested is seen as a necessity for providing an objective basis for the structuring of domestic social change programs.