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The American woman, 1988–1989: A Status report
541
Book Reviews
or local community. But in some sense this begs the question. How do we socially recognize these needs without fulfilling them and still claim to be democratic? Radical democracy seems to suggest a mechanism for consistently frustrating individual wants while simultaneously validating and encouraging them. How the system’s stability can be maintained in light of this apparent contradiction is a crucial question. Part of the answer to these questions may come from the adoption of certain aspects of formal democracy in radical democracy. The aspects of formal democracy that the Budapest School likes seem to dissipate dissatisfaction with the social order. Thus radical democracy retains the stabilizing intluence of formal democracy. Radical democracy will have an outlet for socially acceptable expressions of dissatisfaction. Interestingly the appearance of “glasnost” could be seen as a way of providing this same outlet in the Soviet Union. I am frustrated by the reinjection of individualism within a framework which aims for greater social democracy. In some sense, radical democracy is most democratic when it is not very radical, and most radical when it is not very democratic. Brown argues that the Budapest School’s model of radical democracy is a theoretical defense of the mixed economy. This defense is heavily dependent on how a mixed economy is defined. Does the presence of market transactions make an economy mixed or does the presence of market discipline make it mixed? What does private ownership mean in an economy when the state eliminates individual discretion over property? Would these structural changes make socioeconomic decision making, and life more generally, reembedded? Many of the changes envisioned in radical democracy would seem to leave in place the very social structures that caused the drive to expand the scope and influence of market transaction in capitalist societies. These social structures may have a similar impact in a radical democracy as they do in formal capitalist democracy. It is not at all clear that the ethical necessity to allow individuals to express their needs and to tolerate noncomformance requires that social mechanisms be put into place that validate those needs indiscriminately and provide means for actualizing these desires. None of these questions are raised to indicate that Brown has neglected any aspect of the Budapest School. Instead they illustrate the questions that reading this fine book will pose for the reader. Any book which claims to introduce a school of thought must faithfully represent the ideas of the school and should encourage the reader to pursue the school’s ideas on their own. Brown’s book succeeds magnificently on both counts. The American Woman, 1988-l 989: A Status Report Edited by Sara E. Rix New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989.443~~. $9.95 paperback Reviewed by Dominique
N. Khactu, University
of North Dakota.
When i?re Feminine Mystique appeared in 1963, Betty Friedan, the founder and first president of the National Organization for Women (1966-1973) helped set in motion
542
THE SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL
Vol. 28/No. 4/l 991
what became the most powerful force for social change in our time. She told women to leave their suburban kitchens and go out there to work. No unpaid volunteer community action, but real work with salaries, business lunches, pension and profitsharing plans. Her “clucking” was directed mainly at the well trained and educated middle-class women: the poor were already breaking their backs for a meager living, and the rich were either packing for a distant ski resort in Colorado or unpacking at some well-sought beach in the Bahamas. In that first book, Friedan had articulated the yearnings and frustrations that millions of women felt but could not express adequately. It was a book that changed many lives in the 1960s and 1970s. As the twenty-fifth anniversary of Friedan’s Feminine Mystique emerges on the scene, the year 1989 seemed an appropriate time to reflect on what women have gained-and perhaps given up-since the modern women’s movement began. And Sara Rix’s i%e American Woman, 1988-1989: A Status Report attempts to fulfil such a task. This book highlights women’s continued march into occupations once virtually closed to them. It looks at women engaged in specific occupations such as law enforcement, road construction, and ministry. Women’s progress in these fields has not been without its problems, a point often stressed by several authors. For instance, with the success of occupational integration of male and female workers comes the new concern about “occupational resegration.” Once a profession becomes identified as female-oriented or dominated, “many men look elsewhere for their careers” (New York Times, February 21, 1988). The status of workers in traditionally female occupations is of great importance because it is in those occupations that the vast majority of employed women are found. This volume includes a specific chapter examining the status and prospects of registered nurses, of whom 94 percent are female. Like other traditionally female professions, nursing does not typically pay as well as traditionally male professions. Today, nursing salaries still seem to reflect the erroneous assumption that nursing is simply an interim job between school and marriage. The contributors of this volume also offer their assessment on the status of minority women. Two chapters focus on the minority women in particular: one on the educational attainment of black women (Wilkerson’s “The Critical Moment: The Educational Status of Black Women”), and the other, on the findings from a survey of young Hispanic women (Valdiviseo’s “High School and Beyond: The Young Hispanic Woman”). Conference volumes such as this one usually vary in their aims, composition and quality. In some instances, the contents are so miscellaneous and the connecting threads so tenuous that the original cast seems to resemble a group of characters in search of an author rather than a scholarly assemblage of purposive truth seekers. However, the present volume is unusual in that while it is written by a diverse group of women and scholars who are experts in their own specialized areas or interests, it presents a comprehensive and unified exploration of what is ailing the American woman today. The diagnosis of the American woman’s social and economic malaise and the accompanying prescriptions are accomplished with a certain unity of vision that would not normally be expected from a mixture of the collected wisdom of twenty-five individual women.
Book
Reviews
543
Structurally, this volume can be broken into three major parts. First, a general discussion or rather reflection on the women’s movement takes place in some chapters, especially the first three of the book. Today, women are making their mark everywhere in the American scene. In politics alone, both at the polls and on the hustings, not only do more women than men vote, but a larger proportion of eligible women vote. In addition, there are considerable differences by gender with respect to the issues voters think are more important. These factors add up to a formula for growing political influence. Second, a close look at some selected occupations that are judged to be critical to women’s issues: women in the clergy, women in farming, women in music, women in law enforcement, women in nursing, and women in road construction. Third, several short chapters are reserved to the analysis of some newly emerging issues affecting women: women and health care, women and pension coverage, women and choice or chance in marriage, women in prison, women and AIDS. In breadth of coverage, these essays range over a very wide variety of topics concerning the American woman. If the book does have a weakness it stems from the effort of the editor, Sara Rix, to try to get such a comprehensive treatment on the status of women out of a single volume. The result is that the examination of some issues remains either quite descriptive or too general. She seems aware of this and admits that many important aspects of the status of women in the United States remain to be addressed: she suggests that future editions of The American Woman will treat them in-depth, e.g., homeless women, women in the judicial system, women in the peace movement. Researchers, especially academic scholars, will find l?ze American Woman, 19881989 a delight: it is a cornucopia of statistical data on women’s issues which can be found in the book’s numerous tables and charts (pp. 333-397), and voluminous references (pp. 400-417). Taken as a whole, this is stimulating report on the status of the American woman today. It is a very timely piece of work. All in all, Sara E. Rix, Director of Research at the Women’s Research and Education Institute (WREI) has put together a valuable annual report on the status of women. Written in a succinct and readable style by experts in the field, the volume examines different topics on the American woman such as women in the economy, women in the political process, women in the arts. It also provides a statistical portrait focusing on education, income, health, employment, and much else. A brief review like this can only indicate a few of the ideas and suggestions put forward in this volume. To the reader, whether one is interested in women’s equality or inequality, gender harmony or discrimination, this report provides much food for thought, It contains many ideas that merit further exploration; they are stimulating and well presented. Any interested party concerned with the women’s movement and equity will benefit from reading this timely and thoughtful book. And I hope that it will not go unnoticed by students who wish to have some grasp of what is going on with women in America today.
Book Reviews
or local community. But in some sense this begs the question. How do we socially recognize these needs without fulfilling them and still claim to be democratic? Radical democracy seems to suggest a mechanism for consistently frustrating individual wants while simultaneously validating and encouraging them. How the system’s stability can be maintained in light of this apparent contradiction is a crucial question. Part of the answer to these questions may come from the adoption of certain aspects of formal democracy in radical democracy. The aspects of formal democracy that the Budapest School likes seem to dissipate dissatisfaction with the social order. Thus radical democracy retains the stabilizing intluence of formal democracy. Radical democracy will have an outlet for socially acceptable expressions of dissatisfaction. Interestingly the appearance of “glasnost” could be seen as a way of providing this same outlet in the Soviet Union. I am frustrated by the reinjection of individualism within a framework which aims for greater social democracy. In some sense, radical democracy is most democratic when it is not very radical, and most radical when it is not very democratic. Brown argues that the Budapest School’s model of radical democracy is a theoretical defense of the mixed economy. This defense is heavily dependent on how a mixed economy is defined. Does the presence of market transactions make an economy mixed or does the presence of market discipline make it mixed? What does private ownership mean in an economy when the state eliminates individual discretion over property? Would these structural changes make socioeconomic decision making, and life more generally, reembedded? Many of the changes envisioned in radical democracy would seem to leave in place the very social structures that caused the drive to expand the scope and influence of market transaction in capitalist societies. These social structures may have a similar impact in a radical democracy as they do in formal capitalist democracy. It is not at all clear that the ethical necessity to allow individuals to express their needs and to tolerate noncomformance requires that social mechanisms be put into place that validate those needs indiscriminately and provide means for actualizing these desires. None of these questions are raised to indicate that Brown has neglected any aspect of the Budapest School. Instead they illustrate the questions that reading this fine book will pose for the reader. Any book which claims to introduce a school of thought must faithfully represent the ideas of the school and should encourage the reader to pursue the school’s ideas on their own. Brown’s book succeeds magnificently on both counts. The American Woman, 1988-l 989: A Status Report Edited by Sara E. Rix New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989.443~~. $9.95 paperback Reviewed by Dominique
N. Khactu, University
of North Dakota.
When i?re Feminine Mystique appeared in 1963, Betty Friedan, the founder and first president of the National Organization for Women (1966-1973) helped set in motion
542
THE SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL
Vol. 28/No. 4/l 991
what became the most powerful force for social change in our time. She told women to leave their suburban kitchens and go out there to work. No unpaid volunteer community action, but real work with salaries, business lunches, pension and profitsharing plans. Her “clucking” was directed mainly at the well trained and educated middle-class women: the poor were already breaking their backs for a meager living, and the rich were either packing for a distant ski resort in Colorado or unpacking at some well-sought beach in the Bahamas. In that first book, Friedan had articulated the yearnings and frustrations that millions of women felt but could not express adequately. It was a book that changed many lives in the 1960s and 1970s. As the twenty-fifth anniversary of Friedan’s Feminine Mystique emerges on the scene, the year 1989 seemed an appropriate time to reflect on what women have gained-and perhaps given up-since the modern women’s movement began. And Sara Rix’s i%e American Woman, 1988-1989: A Status Report attempts to fulfil such a task. This book highlights women’s continued march into occupations once virtually closed to them. It looks at women engaged in specific occupations such as law enforcement, road construction, and ministry. Women’s progress in these fields has not been without its problems, a point often stressed by several authors. For instance, with the success of occupational integration of male and female workers comes the new concern about “occupational resegration.” Once a profession becomes identified as female-oriented or dominated, “many men look elsewhere for their careers” (New York Times, February 21, 1988). The status of workers in traditionally female occupations is of great importance because it is in those occupations that the vast majority of employed women are found. This volume includes a specific chapter examining the status and prospects of registered nurses, of whom 94 percent are female. Like other traditionally female professions, nursing does not typically pay as well as traditionally male professions. Today, nursing salaries still seem to reflect the erroneous assumption that nursing is simply an interim job between school and marriage. The contributors of this volume also offer their assessment on the status of minority women. Two chapters focus on the minority women in particular: one on the educational attainment of black women (Wilkerson’s “The Critical Moment: The Educational Status of Black Women”), and the other, on the findings from a survey of young Hispanic women (Valdiviseo’s “High School and Beyond: The Young Hispanic Woman”). Conference volumes such as this one usually vary in their aims, composition and quality. In some instances, the contents are so miscellaneous and the connecting threads so tenuous that the original cast seems to resemble a group of characters in search of an author rather than a scholarly assemblage of purposive truth seekers. However, the present volume is unusual in that while it is written by a diverse group of women and scholars who are experts in their own specialized areas or interests, it presents a comprehensive and unified exploration of what is ailing the American woman today. The diagnosis of the American woman’s social and economic malaise and the accompanying prescriptions are accomplished with a certain unity of vision that would not normally be expected from a mixture of the collected wisdom of twenty-five individual women.
Book
Reviews
543
Structurally, this volume can be broken into three major parts. First, a general discussion or rather reflection on the women’s movement takes place in some chapters, especially the first three of the book. Today, women are making their mark everywhere in the American scene. In politics alone, both at the polls and on the hustings, not only do more women than men vote, but a larger proportion of eligible women vote. In addition, there are considerable differences by gender with respect to the issues voters think are more important. These factors add up to a formula for growing political influence. Second, a close look at some selected occupations that are judged to be critical to women’s issues: women in the clergy, women in farming, women in music, women in law enforcement, women in nursing, and women in road construction. Third, several short chapters are reserved to the analysis of some newly emerging issues affecting women: women and health care, women and pension coverage, women and choice or chance in marriage, women in prison, women and AIDS. In breadth of coverage, these essays range over a very wide variety of topics concerning the American woman. If the book does have a weakness it stems from the effort of the editor, Sara Rix, to try to get such a comprehensive treatment on the status of women out of a single volume. The result is that the examination of some issues remains either quite descriptive or too general. She seems aware of this and admits that many important aspects of the status of women in the United States remain to be addressed: she suggests that future editions of The American Woman will treat them in-depth, e.g., homeless women, women in the judicial system, women in the peace movement. Researchers, especially academic scholars, will find l?ze American Woman, 19881989 a delight: it is a cornucopia of statistical data on women’s issues which can be found in the book’s numerous tables and charts (pp. 333-397), and voluminous references (pp. 400-417). Taken as a whole, this is stimulating report on the status of the American woman today. It is a very timely piece of work. All in all, Sara E. Rix, Director of Research at the Women’s Research and Education Institute (WREI) has put together a valuable annual report on the status of women. Written in a succinct and readable style by experts in the field, the volume examines different topics on the American woman such as women in the economy, women in the political process, women in the arts. It also provides a statistical portrait focusing on education, income, health, employment, and much else. A brief review like this can only indicate a few of the ideas and suggestions put forward in this volume. To the reader, whether one is interested in women’s equality or inequality, gender harmony or discrimination, this report provides much food for thought, It contains many ideas that merit further exploration; they are stimulating and well presented. Any interested party concerned with the women’s movement and equity will benefit from reading this timely and thoughtful book. And I hope that it will not go unnoticed by students who wish to have some grasp of what is going on with women in America today.