Abstract
With the purpose of interconnecting the three main papers in this special issue on “Social Position of Women in Contemporary Society, ” I approach the interrelationships among various roles played by contemporary women from the theoretical standpoint of life course. I regard the life course of an individual as an age-specific configuration of various careers (familial, educational, occupational, social and so on) with 'a biological growth cycle' at its core, and pay special attention to inter-and intra-generational role conflicts centering around the care of children, the sick and the old, which are made inevitable by the entwining and interlocking life courses of close relatives. I clarify conceptually that women rather than men have been obliged to carry these role conflicts because women are directly charged with supporting the growth cycle, in the form of career conflicts bewteen their familial and other careers including occupational one. I materialize this through a cohort analysis of contemporary changes in the life course of women, and finally attempt to identify the possible ways of overcoming career conflicts of women inside as well as outside of the family, in the hope of serving as an introduction to the three following articles that treat familial, educational and occupational aspects of women's problem respectively.
