- Email: [email protected]
The modern woman, sociological, medical, economical, pedagogical and psychological studies
Boon REVIEWS
239
to be of much research use except pragmatically for setting broad limits to the topics dealt with. If it is thought to be different from these other “labels”, this difference is not clearly explained or demonstrated in the book. The concept of “value” has so far been used most precisely in economics, and there it carries a connotation of comparison: the value of a thing is its worth relative to something else; this permits quantification. Perhaps an attempt should be made to apply this usage by analogy or extension in studying non-economic aspects of society. ROBERTF. GRAY Dept. of Anthropology, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana
THE MODERN WOMAN, SOCIOLOGICAL, MEDICAL, ECONOMICAL, PEDAGOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES. Edited by MAGDALENASOKOLOWSKA,
Ksiazka i Wiedza, Warsaw 1966, pp. 376. Price z.45. THE MODERNWOMANis a collective work edited by MAGDALENASOKOLOWSKA,based on the Seminar on Women’s Work conducted by the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at PAN (Polish Academy of Sciences) in 1963-65. The propositions presented and the more or less cautiously formulated hypotheses are based on empirical materials. The authors attempt to deduce generalizations from the data in order to reveal the directions and dynamics of certain social processes. However, the objective and subjective processes get confused in this dynamic matter; social development, in the first instance determined by economic premises, appears here to be unusually uneven. The social acceptance of women’s liberation and of endowing them with equal rights has hitherto been blocked by a wall of doubt, lack of confidence, restraints, controversies and-most important-by practical obstacles. Hence if I had to distinguish in the complex of general propositions advanced by specialists in different fields a common denominator, I would point first of all to the clear common tendency to demythologise the problem of modern women in two ways. On the one hand the exceptionally important element of the traditional stereotyped conception of woman’s social role: the so-called biological handicap supposed to thwart the possibility of equal rights. On the other hand the naive, voluntaristic conception which operates with the abstract idea of absolute male and female equality, hence with their absolutely equal opportunities and capabilities in tackling the most varied tasks, principally of a production or general occupational character. The first element, supported by the arguments of a generation of ideologists of traditional social upbringing and behavior, has persisted until recently in different fields of science in the form of variants of “woman’s biological tragedy”. This element has also saturated literature with its threads of fatalism, at times mythologized to the point of mysticism. The second element is well known from the effusions in the still more recent past which present the image of the husky woman climbing scaffolds, or with a pickaxe in her fist. Between the hoary sex determinism and the comparatively young sex voluntarism there is an extensive platform on which the authors of The Modern Woman wage the struggle of de-mythologisation on two fronts. One group of chapters deals with the components of biological fatalism, which promulgate the limited capability of the female organism. This comprises three chapters: MARIA KROLXKOWSKA’S (gynecologist) Women’s Biological Properties and ‘Work, .K_INGA WISNIEW~
240
BOOK REVIEWS
SKA-ROSZKOWSKA’S (gerontologist) The Aging of Women and Work, and MARGOT JEFFERYS’ (sociologist) The Menopause Age Among English Women and Its Symptoms. KROLIKOWSKA refutes the common notion sometimes rendered as axiomatic that the gainful occupation of women negatively affects the course of pregnancy and the health of unborn infants, enhances premature birth, etc. She shows that empirical research does not justify such generalizations. Most essential here are primarily living conditions, the extent of the simultaneous burden of occupational and domestic responsibilities, diet. ROSZKOWSKA indicates the adaptive possibilities of the female organism in middle age and later to even more extensive spheres of gainful occupation, as compared to earlier years. But the author stresses the need of applying geriatric prophylaxis in time, i.e., almost from childhood. JEFFERYSpresents a highly detailed study made in England of Menopausal women, which established in the domains of physiology and psychology the supremacy of standards over pathology and of natural emotional attitudes over “catastrophic” ones. The Modern Woman emphasizes chiefly the social danger. Two elaborate introductory chapters: JERZY PIOTROWSKI’SThe Special Question of Women’s Gainful Employment Outside the Home as well as MAGDALENA SOKOLOWSKA’S and KRYSNNA WROCHNO’SThe Social Position of Women in the Light of Statistics provide a penetrating analysis of the complex of factors which determine the disparity between the constitutional endowment of women with equal rights and their actual social position. The authors avoid the mechanical separation of the sphere of gainful occupation from that of domestic and family organizational activity. They treat the question of gainfully employed women as one conceptual whole embracing heterogeneous phenomena, but these are regarded as the starting point and not as a static sum composed of non-interpenetrating, separate elements. For it is precisely the merging of the two social roles which react upon each other in practice that basically constitutes the social role of the modern woman, and is also the primary source of retarded development and conflicting situations. In his polemic against the widespread and still strong opinion of the mechanical division of roles, JERZYPIOTROWSKIwrites: “An important manifestation of retardation in the adjustment of woman’s occupational and domestic functions is the fact that in the image of her social role-contrary to the image of man’s role-there is in general no integration of her family and home and occupational functions into one whole. Most women themselves lack such an image. Many of them regard the home and employment as two independent, separate, disconnected systems in their world of experience and activity, without a clear enough consciousness of the unavoidable relation between the two and the indispensability of their harmonization in the image of their own personality. Hence the domestic and occupational roles of women are not yet adjusted and integrated. They are not properly unfolded while the social setup and approach are not adapted to them.” The weight of tradition (both in the social as in the above-cited “biological” sense), the hitherto insurmountable patterns of the unequal division of domestic obligations between the man and the woman, the inadequacy of mechanized household facilities with the reduction thus far of the physical effort required for the fultilment of domestic chores but the almost insignificant limitation of the time consumed, the inadequate network of public facilities and services-such are the factors which determine that equal rights for women continue to be much more effective quantitatively than qualitatively. Thus the empirical material of the above mentioned chapter of SOKOLOWSKA and WROCHNOas well as the study by ANNA F%EISS-ZAJDOWA of Polish Women’s Occupational Preferences and JANLNA
BOOKREVIEWS WALUK’S
241
paper on Women’s Pay in Poland unequivocally establish that the situation of gainfully employed women (who constitute more than a third of Poland’s total employed) is worse on the labor market than that of men. Women are generally paid less, sometimes for the same work. They systematically get the lower paid jobs, are deliberately directed to monotonous occupations (with the constant argument that they are better suited for them) and enjoy limited access to the higher levels in the occupational hierarchy. As is well known in practice, social conditioning is particularly interwoven here with the economic, thus closing the vicious circle in which the continuing women’s preference for the traditional female occupations perpetuate their lower economic rank. While on the other hand, the feminization of certain professions (e.g. medical, nursing, teaching), does not necessarily attest to preference, but simply to the lesser competition in these fields with men who choose the better-paying professions. It may be in place to cite here some appropriate passages from the chapter by SOKOLOWSKA and WROCHNO entitled Women’s Social Position in Light of Statistics: “A great variety of real problems appear in the contemporary world in connection with women’s gainful employment and their position in society. In some countries the problem is reduced to the fight for women’s right to work in general. In others that struggle has reached the second stage: for full access to education. It seems that highly industrialized countries have entered the third stage, in which the key link becomes the participation of women in decision-making bodies in management, the governing apparatus, in all spheres of creative work. This has nothing in common with the feminist slogan ‘admit women’, nor with the frequently practiced fiction of appointing individual women to governmental agencies so that women ‘may be represented’. “Women’s participation in ‘places at the top’ is necessary for both men and women. It’s in the interests of society as a whole, since all fields of life require the equilibrium of male and female elements”. And further : “Women are necessary at the top not because they are the equals of men, but because they are different.” Another group of studies contained in the volume, consisting of materials illustrating the general propositions and postulates, point to the basic need for de-mythologisation on two fronts. These studies are: HELENA STRZEMINSKA’STime Budget of Female Workers, Clerks and Salesladies, ANDRZEJ TYMOWSKI’S Income and Expenditures of Single Women, JOZEF TULSKI’S The Attitude to Work of Female and Male Adolescent Workers, KRYSTYNA WROCHNO’S Women in Directing Positions About Themselves, ADAM KIJRZYNOWSKI’S Occupations and Employment Continuity of Young Mothers, RYSZARD RAD~ILOWICZ The Interests of Boy and Girl Pupils, MARIA ZIEMSKA’S Inter-Personal Relations in Two and Three-Generation Families. These authors demonstrate at the same time that a number of phenomena or even trends initially determined by economic premises gradually assume a life of their own, become objective and independent of the original conditioning, while creating a new subjective climate of desires and aspirations. Thus for instance, one of the empirical analyses shows that close to 70 per cent of the investigated women returned to work after maternity leave. It is impossible not to perceive that this simple but eloquent fact indicates an almost structural change in the family, that the woman’s personality is being changed and shaped anew as well as her relations with her immediate and further removed environment. A characteristic of publications of the type of The Modern Woman which stems from
‘14
BOOK REVIEWS
directing various specialists towards one complex question, is that they extend the spheres of inquiry. At least one of these pertains to the incentives or checks to woman’s cultural advance. The concept of equal rights is connected, among other things, with making it possible for women to perceive cultural values. Their access to cultural life is limited under the prevailing conditions of the unequal division of domestic tasks. Woman continues to be the sacrificial victim of the harmful traditional division by her responsibility for two roles : occupational and domestic. This causes a constant state of psychic tension and fatigue which limits her cultural participation in any form. The effect is of course the slowing down of the tempo of her general intellectual advance, in turn making it more difficult for her to break out of the circle of traditional preferences and aspirations or to enrich her qualifications and values which would stimulate her to leap forward in the occupational hierarchy. This was shown by many investigations conducted also in highly industrialized countries. as the United States and France. If we may now proceed to a generalized hypothesis-it seems that the further dynamic of woman’s social advance, dependent on a number of economic, socio-organizational and cultural preconditions, will develop less spontaneously than during the period when Poland’s basic economic transformation commenced. Women’s work as a subject offurther research will furthermore require particularly exhaustive stratification. Women who undertake employment on the lowest level of the occupational hierarchy in Poland, and in much richer countries as well are under pressure of economic necessity; except that with us the needs are more elementary, while in the richer countries demandis shaped by the pressure of a greater abundance of goods on the market. It may be, however, that the intellectual and emotional process-the source of many fully conscious transformations the the sphere of cognition of the scale of values-the “intellectualization” process of women of particularly high professional qualitications-which is more dynamic in Poland than elsewhere-and that these elements evoke a greater sensibility to other than economic incentives. With reference to ideology, the problem seems to be vastly complicated. From the inception of the women’s emancipation movement in one or another form until today, gainful occupation has always been connected with social progress, understood of course, in its broadest sense. It is significant that this understanding is also breaking through in capitalist countries, and among circles far from the social or political left. Despite all elements of injustice and discrimination, lack of confidence and skepticism, the paramount phenomenon of huge armies of women entering the labor market has immeasurably extended the range of social acceptance of this objective fact as a token of progressive change in contemporary society. A perhaps unanticipated development appeared at the same time: the social advance of gainfully employed women seems to have impelled the strengthening of the social position of women in general. Public attention is being directed ever more frequently to the distressing circumstances and needs of women home workers. Thus in such countries as Italy, France, England there are attempts to calculate the value share of home work in the national income. And in the U.S.A.-according to various publications-women owe the strengthening of their position in the family and in small social groups not so much to occupational activity as to their organizational role in the home. It does seem as if the domestic and family haven, hitherto inseverably connected with the function of women, calls for being placed in a higher rank in the exceedingly institutionalized, highly industrialized world. Instead of conflict between gainfully employed women and those working at home-until recently promulgated by progressive ideologythere is increasingly emerging something in the nature of a united front between the two.
Boon REVIEWS
243
But a basic contradiction is taking shape between working and non-working women, as organizers of domestic life on the one hand, and the inadequacy of public and governmental experience, which would facilitate that organizational function, on the other hand. The law of communicating vessels has played a rather unexpected role here : the working women pull along the non-working in their wake; and what is more, energise the home and the family as one of the centers of social revindication. But to return to The Modern Woman-here is a book rich in the elements of discernment, straightforwardness and de-mystification. It provokes the appetite for more. KAMILACHYLINSKA Warszawa IO, Warynskiego 9139
MENTAL ILLNESS IN THE URBAN NEGRO COMMUNITY. SEYMOURPARKER and ROBERTJ. KLEINER. The Free Press, New York, 1966. 408 pp + xiv. Price $9.95 OF THE major sociological approaches to the problem of etiology in mental illness, few have been so thoroughly explored of late as those involving some contradiction in the patient’s social position such as status inconsistency or perhaps some variant of MERTON’S refinement of anomie theory in which the disjunction between the goals of the culture and the patient’s ability to achieve them in his particular location in the social structure is highlighted. These have begun to shed some explanatory light on the reasons for the large number of contradictory findings concerning social status and mental illness rates. What is still missing is an empirically verifiable intervening mechanism between sociological (independent) variables, such as age, race and occupation, and the dependent variable, mental illness. Such a mechanism would explain the transformation of social problems into mental illness and might help to bring some order into the present anarchy of findings which are different for different areas, times and social groupings. This was the problem for which PARKER,a sociologist and KLEINER,a psychologist, set out to provide a solution. Mental Illness in the Urban Negro Community is based upon the findings of a study of a control group of 1489 Negroes drawn from voters’ lists in Philadelphia and of 1324 Negroes processed by the Eastern Mental Health Reception Center in Philadelphia. PARKERand KLEINER,in addition to gathering standard socioeconomic data on the patient and community samples, also sought answers concerning mobility aspirations, identity, self satisfaction, perception of the opportunity available in the social systems, etc. The questions were described in more theoretical terms as intervening variables concerned with perception of the openness of the social system, goal striving stress, reference group discrepancy, self esteem. As can be seen, these are not independent of each other, where, for example, a closed opportunity structure is perceived, it would be dilhcult to blame one’s self for lack of success. In general, the finding, was that goal striving stress (high aspiration relative to achievement) where the individual compares himself unfavorably with his reference group, contributes to low self esteem, which the authors assert influences susceptibility to mental illness. For the goal striving stress to operate at a high level, however, the individual must also perceive the opportunity structure as open (thus making possible the focusing of blame on the self, not on the system).
239
to be of much research use except pragmatically for setting broad limits to the topics dealt with. If it is thought to be different from these other “labels”, this difference is not clearly explained or demonstrated in the book. The concept of “value” has so far been used most precisely in economics, and there it carries a connotation of comparison: the value of a thing is its worth relative to something else; this permits quantification. Perhaps an attempt should be made to apply this usage by analogy or extension in studying non-economic aspects of society. ROBERTF. GRAY Dept. of Anthropology, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana
THE MODERN WOMAN, SOCIOLOGICAL, MEDICAL, ECONOMICAL, PEDAGOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES. Edited by MAGDALENASOKOLOWSKA,
Ksiazka i Wiedza, Warsaw 1966, pp. 376. Price z.45. THE MODERNWOMANis a collective work edited by MAGDALENASOKOLOWSKA,based on the Seminar on Women’s Work conducted by the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at PAN (Polish Academy of Sciences) in 1963-65. The propositions presented and the more or less cautiously formulated hypotheses are based on empirical materials. The authors attempt to deduce generalizations from the data in order to reveal the directions and dynamics of certain social processes. However, the objective and subjective processes get confused in this dynamic matter; social development, in the first instance determined by economic premises, appears here to be unusually uneven. The social acceptance of women’s liberation and of endowing them with equal rights has hitherto been blocked by a wall of doubt, lack of confidence, restraints, controversies and-most important-by practical obstacles. Hence if I had to distinguish in the complex of general propositions advanced by specialists in different fields a common denominator, I would point first of all to the clear common tendency to demythologise the problem of modern women in two ways. On the one hand the exceptionally important element of the traditional stereotyped conception of woman’s social role: the so-called biological handicap supposed to thwart the possibility of equal rights. On the other hand the naive, voluntaristic conception which operates with the abstract idea of absolute male and female equality, hence with their absolutely equal opportunities and capabilities in tackling the most varied tasks, principally of a production or general occupational character. The first element, supported by the arguments of a generation of ideologists of traditional social upbringing and behavior, has persisted until recently in different fields of science in the form of variants of “woman’s biological tragedy”. This element has also saturated literature with its threads of fatalism, at times mythologized to the point of mysticism. The second element is well known from the effusions in the still more recent past which present the image of the husky woman climbing scaffolds, or with a pickaxe in her fist. Between the hoary sex determinism and the comparatively young sex voluntarism there is an extensive platform on which the authors of The Modern Woman wage the struggle of de-mythologisation on two fronts. One group of chapters deals with the components of biological fatalism, which promulgate the limited capability of the female organism. This comprises three chapters: MARIA KROLXKOWSKA’S (gynecologist) Women’s Biological Properties and ‘Work, .K_INGA WISNIEW~
240
BOOK REVIEWS
SKA-ROSZKOWSKA’S (gerontologist) The Aging of Women and Work, and MARGOT JEFFERYS’ (sociologist) The Menopause Age Among English Women and Its Symptoms. KROLIKOWSKA refutes the common notion sometimes rendered as axiomatic that the gainful occupation of women negatively affects the course of pregnancy and the health of unborn infants, enhances premature birth, etc. She shows that empirical research does not justify such generalizations. Most essential here are primarily living conditions, the extent of the simultaneous burden of occupational and domestic responsibilities, diet. ROSZKOWSKA indicates the adaptive possibilities of the female organism in middle age and later to even more extensive spheres of gainful occupation, as compared to earlier years. But the author stresses the need of applying geriatric prophylaxis in time, i.e., almost from childhood. JEFFERYSpresents a highly detailed study made in England of Menopausal women, which established in the domains of physiology and psychology the supremacy of standards over pathology and of natural emotional attitudes over “catastrophic” ones. The Modern Woman emphasizes chiefly the social danger. Two elaborate introductory chapters: JERZY PIOTROWSKI’SThe Special Question of Women’s Gainful Employment Outside the Home as well as MAGDALENA SOKOLOWSKA’S and KRYSNNA WROCHNO’SThe Social Position of Women in the Light of Statistics provide a penetrating analysis of the complex of factors which determine the disparity between the constitutional endowment of women with equal rights and their actual social position. The authors avoid the mechanical separation of the sphere of gainful occupation from that of domestic and family organizational activity. They treat the question of gainfully employed women as one conceptual whole embracing heterogeneous phenomena, but these are regarded as the starting point and not as a static sum composed of non-interpenetrating, separate elements. For it is precisely the merging of the two social roles which react upon each other in practice that basically constitutes the social role of the modern woman, and is also the primary source of retarded development and conflicting situations. In his polemic against the widespread and still strong opinion of the mechanical division of roles, JERZYPIOTROWSKIwrites: “An important manifestation of retardation in the adjustment of woman’s occupational and domestic functions is the fact that in the image of her social role-contrary to the image of man’s role-there is in general no integration of her family and home and occupational functions into one whole. Most women themselves lack such an image. Many of them regard the home and employment as two independent, separate, disconnected systems in their world of experience and activity, without a clear enough consciousness of the unavoidable relation between the two and the indispensability of their harmonization in the image of their own personality. Hence the domestic and occupational roles of women are not yet adjusted and integrated. They are not properly unfolded while the social setup and approach are not adapted to them.” The weight of tradition (both in the social as in the above-cited “biological” sense), the hitherto insurmountable patterns of the unequal division of domestic obligations between the man and the woman, the inadequacy of mechanized household facilities with the reduction thus far of the physical effort required for the fultilment of domestic chores but the almost insignificant limitation of the time consumed, the inadequate network of public facilities and services-such are the factors which determine that equal rights for women continue to be much more effective quantitatively than qualitatively. Thus the empirical material of the above mentioned chapter of SOKOLOWSKA and WROCHNOas well as the study by ANNA F%EISS-ZAJDOWA of Polish Women’s Occupational Preferences and JANLNA
BOOKREVIEWS WALUK’S
241
paper on Women’s Pay in Poland unequivocally establish that the situation of gainfully employed women (who constitute more than a third of Poland’s total employed) is worse on the labor market than that of men. Women are generally paid less, sometimes for the same work. They systematically get the lower paid jobs, are deliberately directed to monotonous occupations (with the constant argument that they are better suited for them) and enjoy limited access to the higher levels in the occupational hierarchy. As is well known in practice, social conditioning is particularly interwoven here with the economic, thus closing the vicious circle in which the continuing women’s preference for the traditional female occupations perpetuate their lower economic rank. While on the other hand, the feminization of certain professions (e.g. medical, nursing, teaching), does not necessarily attest to preference, but simply to the lesser competition in these fields with men who choose the better-paying professions. It may be in place to cite here some appropriate passages from the chapter by SOKOLOWSKA and WROCHNO entitled Women’s Social Position in Light of Statistics: “A great variety of real problems appear in the contemporary world in connection with women’s gainful employment and their position in society. In some countries the problem is reduced to the fight for women’s right to work in general. In others that struggle has reached the second stage: for full access to education. It seems that highly industrialized countries have entered the third stage, in which the key link becomes the participation of women in decision-making bodies in management, the governing apparatus, in all spheres of creative work. This has nothing in common with the feminist slogan ‘admit women’, nor with the frequently practiced fiction of appointing individual women to governmental agencies so that women ‘may be represented’. “Women’s participation in ‘places at the top’ is necessary for both men and women. It’s in the interests of society as a whole, since all fields of life require the equilibrium of male and female elements”. And further : “Women are necessary at the top not because they are the equals of men, but because they are different.” Another group of studies contained in the volume, consisting of materials illustrating the general propositions and postulates, point to the basic need for de-mythologisation on two fronts. These studies are: HELENA STRZEMINSKA’STime Budget of Female Workers, Clerks and Salesladies, ANDRZEJ TYMOWSKI’S Income and Expenditures of Single Women, JOZEF TULSKI’S The Attitude to Work of Female and Male Adolescent Workers, KRYSTYNA WROCHNO’S Women in Directing Positions About Themselves, ADAM KIJRZYNOWSKI’S Occupations and Employment Continuity of Young Mothers, RYSZARD RAD~ILOWICZ The Interests of Boy and Girl Pupils, MARIA ZIEMSKA’S Inter-Personal Relations in Two and Three-Generation Families. These authors demonstrate at the same time that a number of phenomena or even trends initially determined by economic premises gradually assume a life of their own, become objective and independent of the original conditioning, while creating a new subjective climate of desires and aspirations. Thus for instance, one of the empirical analyses shows that close to 70 per cent of the investigated women returned to work after maternity leave. It is impossible not to perceive that this simple but eloquent fact indicates an almost structural change in the family, that the woman’s personality is being changed and shaped anew as well as her relations with her immediate and further removed environment. A characteristic of publications of the type of The Modern Woman which stems from
‘14
BOOK REVIEWS
directing various specialists towards one complex question, is that they extend the spheres of inquiry. At least one of these pertains to the incentives or checks to woman’s cultural advance. The concept of equal rights is connected, among other things, with making it possible for women to perceive cultural values. Their access to cultural life is limited under the prevailing conditions of the unequal division of domestic tasks. Woman continues to be the sacrificial victim of the harmful traditional division by her responsibility for two roles : occupational and domestic. This causes a constant state of psychic tension and fatigue which limits her cultural participation in any form. The effect is of course the slowing down of the tempo of her general intellectual advance, in turn making it more difficult for her to break out of the circle of traditional preferences and aspirations or to enrich her qualifications and values which would stimulate her to leap forward in the occupational hierarchy. This was shown by many investigations conducted also in highly industrialized countries. as the United States and France. If we may now proceed to a generalized hypothesis-it seems that the further dynamic of woman’s social advance, dependent on a number of economic, socio-organizational and cultural preconditions, will develop less spontaneously than during the period when Poland’s basic economic transformation commenced. Women’s work as a subject offurther research will furthermore require particularly exhaustive stratification. Women who undertake employment on the lowest level of the occupational hierarchy in Poland, and in much richer countries as well are under pressure of economic necessity; except that with us the needs are more elementary, while in the richer countries demandis shaped by the pressure of a greater abundance of goods on the market. It may be, however, that the intellectual and emotional process-the source of many fully conscious transformations the the sphere of cognition of the scale of values-the “intellectualization” process of women of particularly high professional qualitications-which is more dynamic in Poland than elsewhere-and that these elements evoke a greater sensibility to other than economic incentives. With reference to ideology, the problem seems to be vastly complicated. From the inception of the women’s emancipation movement in one or another form until today, gainful occupation has always been connected with social progress, understood of course, in its broadest sense. It is significant that this understanding is also breaking through in capitalist countries, and among circles far from the social or political left. Despite all elements of injustice and discrimination, lack of confidence and skepticism, the paramount phenomenon of huge armies of women entering the labor market has immeasurably extended the range of social acceptance of this objective fact as a token of progressive change in contemporary society. A perhaps unanticipated development appeared at the same time: the social advance of gainfully employed women seems to have impelled the strengthening of the social position of women in general. Public attention is being directed ever more frequently to the distressing circumstances and needs of women home workers. Thus in such countries as Italy, France, England there are attempts to calculate the value share of home work in the national income. And in the U.S.A.-according to various publications-women owe the strengthening of their position in the family and in small social groups not so much to occupational activity as to their organizational role in the home. It does seem as if the domestic and family haven, hitherto inseverably connected with the function of women, calls for being placed in a higher rank in the exceedingly institutionalized, highly industrialized world. Instead of conflict between gainfully employed women and those working at home-until recently promulgated by progressive ideologythere is increasingly emerging something in the nature of a united front between the two.
Boon REVIEWS
243
But a basic contradiction is taking shape between working and non-working women, as organizers of domestic life on the one hand, and the inadequacy of public and governmental experience, which would facilitate that organizational function, on the other hand. The law of communicating vessels has played a rather unexpected role here : the working women pull along the non-working in their wake; and what is more, energise the home and the family as one of the centers of social revindication. But to return to The Modern Woman-here is a book rich in the elements of discernment, straightforwardness and de-mystification. It provokes the appetite for more. KAMILACHYLINSKA Warszawa IO, Warynskiego 9139
MENTAL ILLNESS IN THE URBAN NEGRO COMMUNITY. SEYMOURPARKER and ROBERTJ. KLEINER. The Free Press, New York, 1966. 408 pp + xiv. Price $9.95 OF THE major sociological approaches to the problem of etiology in mental illness, few have been so thoroughly explored of late as those involving some contradiction in the patient’s social position such as status inconsistency or perhaps some variant of MERTON’S refinement of anomie theory in which the disjunction between the goals of the culture and the patient’s ability to achieve them in his particular location in the social structure is highlighted. These have begun to shed some explanatory light on the reasons for the large number of contradictory findings concerning social status and mental illness rates. What is still missing is an empirically verifiable intervening mechanism between sociological (independent) variables, such as age, race and occupation, and the dependent variable, mental illness. Such a mechanism would explain the transformation of social problems into mental illness and might help to bring some order into the present anarchy of findings which are different for different areas, times and social groupings. This was the problem for which PARKER,a sociologist and KLEINER,a psychologist, set out to provide a solution. Mental Illness in the Urban Negro Community is based upon the findings of a study of a control group of 1489 Negroes drawn from voters’ lists in Philadelphia and of 1324 Negroes processed by the Eastern Mental Health Reception Center in Philadelphia. PARKERand KLEINER,in addition to gathering standard socioeconomic data on the patient and community samples, also sought answers concerning mobility aspirations, identity, self satisfaction, perception of the opportunity available in the social systems, etc. The questions were described in more theoretical terms as intervening variables concerned with perception of the openness of the social system, goal striving stress, reference group discrepancy, self esteem. As can be seen, these are not independent of each other, where, for example, a closed opportunity structure is perceived, it would be dilhcult to blame one’s self for lack of success. In general, the finding, was that goal striving stress (high aspiration relative to achievement) where the individual compares himself unfavorably with his reference group, contributes to low self esteem, which the authors assert influences susceptibility to mental illness. For the goal striving stress to operate at a high level, however, the individual must also perceive the opportunity structure as open (thus making possible the focusing of blame on the self, not on the system).