Sex Roles: A Journal of Research began publishing in 1975. It is the oldest of the journals publishing social science and psychological research focusing on gender. It seems appropriate that we note the long history of the journal as we reach our 35th year of publication. During this year, we will be publishing a number of special articles and sections to mark this anniversary. These will be designated as “Anniversary” contributions. Many of these will review the history of research on the major topics we address in Sex Roles. One section will focus on teaching. We hope you will enjoy reading these anniversary papers published throughout 2010.

Sex Roles was founded by Phyllis A. Katz. As a professor at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York in the early 1970s, Phyllis kept hearing about colleagues who were not able to publish their research on a topic that had recently become of interest—differences in women and men or boys and girls, and the effects of gender on behavior. At that time, the term “gender” was not widely used, and it was referred to as “sex” or “sex differences.” As Katz (1975) explained in her first issue:

Sex Roles is devoted to publishing both empirically based and theoretical articles that are relevant to sex-role socialization and change in both children and adults. We will particularly welcome new data dealing with the basic processes underlying the transmission of sex-role information, the cultural determinants of particular sex-role structures and attitudes, and the consequences of such structures upon individuals, relationships, and societal institutions. We will also publish critical reviews of existing empirical work, as well as new theoretical approaches. (p. 1-2)

Sex Roles continues to publish the same types of papers, even after 35 years. Although the mission of the journal has changed very little, we do now talk about gender issues rather than using the word, sex. We have considered changing the title of the journal, but have not done this since this would result in libraries and databases considering us to be a new journal.

When the journal began in 1975, it was published quarterly. Each issue was relatively small, with a total of 30 empirical articles being published that first year. Since that time, the widespread interest in the journal has meant that we have never worried about having enough submissions. In fact, over the years, the journal has grown from being quarterly to bi-monthly in 1977, and then monthly in 1981. In 2008, we received 517 new article submissions, and eventually published 31% of these. Since most articles receive multiple reviews as they are revised, we had a total of 1,046 reviews of submissions in 2008. We also published 2 special issues in 2008, and a total of 148 original research articles.

Another major change in Sex Roles has been its increasing internationalization. Since I took over as Editor in 2006, we have had 31 different countries represented among our authors, 41 countries among our reviewers, and seven among our Editorial board. For more information on this, see Frieze and Dittrich (2008).