As we reach the mid-point of the 1970's, we find women in many different positions: working and non-working, middle-class and working class, urban and rural, black and white. There are women with strong ethnic ties or religious orientations, first generation city dwellers and suburbanites. Three factors -- increased female labor force participation, increased divorce rate, and decreased birth rate -- are all having an impact on womens' situation in the 1970s. It is stressed that working class and black women have found support for their roles in a social network of kin and neighbors and in the institutions of the neighborhood. Upwardly mobile blue collar couples, in contrast, may move to cut their ties with family and relatives. It may be that the increasing isolation of such women may be a difficult adjustment. The isolation of the housewife is also related to problems of adapting family responsibilities to new work roles. Legislative reforms like the Equal Rights Amendment, it is concluded, speak to and benefit women in need of jobs, credit, education, better health care and beenfits, and protection from all forms of discrimination. Understanding and appreciating the cultural diversity of women will perhaps bridge these differences and to communicate the similarities in all womens' situations. (Author/JM)