From the Managing Editor

By Henry Muller

As roughly half the world's population, women would hardly seem to need to struggle for attention. Yet struggle is precisely what they have been doing in the final decades of the 20th century. Their endeavors deserve no less a word than revolution -- in expectations, accomplishments, self-realization and relationships with men. It is a revolution that, though far from complete, promises over time to bring about changes as profound for men and women as any that have occurred in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union in the past year.

It was in this context that we decided it was time to prepare an entire issue on women. The subject is familiar to TIME readers. In 1972 we published a magazine almost wholly devoted to the American woman. In recent years, while following women's trials and triumphs in our weekly pages, we have done a number of cover stories on relevant topics, including the child-care crisis % (1987), abortion (1989 and 1990) and the future of feminism (1989). This time, however, we decided on a first: we would not only devote an entire magazine to the subject but make it an extra issue, one that would go to all our subscribers and be available on the newsstands for several weeks. We were pleased when Sears found our plans so intriguing that it offered to become the sole advertiser for this issue.

Many women on and off our staff were eager to contribute to the issue, and it is their efforts that chiefly fill these pages. But we decided early on that it would be inappropriate to confine our contributors to women, and thus we have also involved a number of male colleagues. It has been our goal to make the issue equally interesting to men and to women.

The issue was prepared under the direction of executive editor Edward Jamieson and senior editor Claudia Wallis, with support from virtually every bureau and department. Both editors are familiar with the subject, Jamieson as the overseer of TIME's culture, science and society coverage and Wallis as the author or editor of many stories about women. Says Wallis: "With this issue we were eager to look forward rather than back at the women's movement of the '70s. We wanted to see how the next generation is likely to fare and to what degree women are changing the worlds of business, politics, the arts and other fields as they gain influence."

All of us found it exciting not only to reflect on the varied and often controversial currents that swirl around women's daily lives, struggles and victories in America today, but also to look at the challenges that lie ahead. We consider that task highly important, and TIME is committed to pursuing it without stint in the months and years ahead. We hope you get as much satisfaction from reading this issue as we did from preparing it.