REVOLUTION WITHOUT REVOLT - GENDER, GENER ATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN NORWAY IN THE 1980S

The article describes the social transformations that have taken place in the last twenty years in the life course of young Norwegian women. The educational postindustrial society and the gender revolution are tightly interconnected; young women are now increasingly dominating hi gher education, where they emerge as the winners in a competitive syst em. The article argues that in the late sixties and early seventies No rway experienced a cultural gender revolution, headed by members of th e young, educated cohorts, hut that the structural change giving the g ender revolution its permanence took place in the eighties, and that t he gender revolution is still in its early phases. The peer generation 's position as an important reference group and the school as the cent ral social universe of the youngsters assign the educational instituti ons an important position related to both structural and cultural chan ge, fuelling social innovation. The rapid structural and cultural chan ge is related not only to the general generational turnover but also t o the vapid turnover of generations within the segregated institutiona l subsocieties of the educational society. The choice of further educa tion is, for example, experienced by young people as the choice of the majority if it is chosen by the majority of their fellow students, ev en if this was the choice of a minority among age groups lust a few ye ars older. The development of new ideas, and not least the forgetting of old values and habits, as Mannheim underlines, has to be understood within this modem institutional framework.