Women and identity: Value choices in a changing world

Book Beviews

science fiction’s old and new modes of representing women, speaking a “women’s voice,” and including women’s themes in the first half of her book is very helpful and reveals a precedence for the work she suggests. However, this section can be intimidating to those unfamiliar with the writers she discusses. The second (and strongest) section of the book explores in depth four contemporary science fiction writers. their works, and the relationship between their feminist attitudes and their art. Here I find her discussion most entertaining, enlightening, and engaging. Beware! Her enthusiasm is contagious. Though they may seem strange to “die-hard” science fiction fans, the ideas presented in Femithm and Science ZWion are indeed logical and well founded. Science fiction has always asked the question “what if?“. Now, as Lefanu suggests, the question can be successfully applied to such feminist concerns as the future of gender equality, labor roles, child rearing, human sexuality, male/female relationships, and female/female relationships. In creating a feminist science fiction, the writer is truly free to explore these women’s issues, as well as the future of humankind. This book is an encouragement to women readers and writers (science fittion and otherwise) and a gentle warning to the men scribbling hurriedly in their ivory spaceships-prepare to be boarded! AMYHUDOCK TEE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA COLUMBU, S.C.. USA

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VAWE CHOICES IN A CHANGING

WORLD,by C. Margaret Hall. Hemisphere Publishing Corporation. Basingstoke and Bristol, 1989. Are we living in a time of rapid social change when everything is up for grabs? One of the basic assertions of C. Margaret Hall’s book is that in the West we have moved from a traditional society based on patriarchal religious values to a modern secular society where gender values are in flux. Women are now in a position to step back, look at the value systems and identities available to them (value systems being at the core of women’s identity), and to choose which they want. The modem, secular value syustem, being more expansive and allowing women greater autonomy for themselves, is the one they are obviously going to choose if they know about it. Women and Zdenfity is an attempt to let women know they have this choice. Hall’s main concern is with individual women changing their individual selves, and then moving outwards to change “our immediate circle, then to society itself” (p. 36). Each chapter Bnishes with either a list of choices that women can make in their lives, or a set of generalizations about value changes which are taking place and propositions for readers to ponder in order to accomplish change. Women, argues Hall, can move away from their self-sacrificing, subordinated roles and restricted social positions through a reappraisal of their values. They will then, in cooperation with others, be able to achieve mobility, fulfiient, and equality with men. Values not only shape identity, they also shape social structures-change our values and our social structures will change.

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Hall’s basic assumptions, however, are presented as givens, with no recognition that others may not share them. We am, for instance, just supposed to accept the idea that we live in a modem, secular, and more progressive, society. Similarly, the underlying assumption that a person’s values are in a direct, generating, relationship to their behaviour and to social structures is never supported. An irritating feature of the book is that in the contexts where she does present “evidence,” Hall constantly refers to “the accumulated data of world explorers and social scientists,” “drawing from clinical studies and cultural research,” and so on. We never know who these social scientists are so that we can read and judge their work for ourselves as them is no referencing. The only section of the book that does have a bibliography is the appendix in which she talks about her therapy-clinical sociology. This appears to be a list of the work of men. Other assertions seem to be based on the limited experience of white middle-class women. For instance, Hall contends that in our modern secular society women no longer have to spend their lives in the private sphere of their homes, dedicating themselves to their families, as in the past. This seems to ignore the experiences of, for example, Black women in the USA, who often lived in the private sphere of other people’s homes in quite a different position from white women. True, Hail sometimes acknowledges that ethnic and social class identities of women differ. However, nearly every time she does this she follows it with the assertion that in essence they are the same. She thus never traces through any implications those differences might have. Whilst Hall constantly mentions the need for women to support each other and to work together, she never recogniaes that women of different races and classes may have competing perceptions and priorities. Everything is thus discussed at such a general level that it becomes almost meaningless. Women come out as a clump of beings who, in our modem society, alI have the same opportunities for renegotiating their values and identity as each other. “In modem industrialized countries, such as the United States, increasing numbers of women have sufficient time and energy for self reflection. Even lower class women in the United States have time and energy for themselves” (p. 2). It is the assumption that all women are “programmed” in the same narrow way and have a single identity that leads Hall to believe that she is writing for and about all women. The biggest problem with this book is that, in the end, C. Margaret Hall is writing for white middle-class women: ‘When women choose to move beyond the restrictive roles, their reference groups-college, graduate school, or professional associations-become broader in scope, and their sense of belonging moves from domestic areas to historical and universal contexts” (p. 62). In fact. when it comes down to it guess who’s at the forefront of the new value system in the U.S.A.-“ New norms are being forged by the middle-classes in the United States” (p. 40), “More women reach out to each other in supportive ways, particularly within the middIe-class.” (p. 49). If you are white and middle-class and want some support in reassessing your identity then you might get something out of this book. If you are not, you will not really find your concerns addressed here. I would suggest C. Margaret Hall put aside her clinical sociology books and pick up, for a start, a few written by Black American feminists. She

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Book Reviews

needs to think more carefully about what she means when she uses the terms “women,” “women’s values,” and “women’s identity.”

the difficulties created for women without men, as the century advanced and previous ways of making a living became increasingly closed to them. In her conclusion, Bridget Hill points out that wherR~SALIND EDWARDS SOUTHBANK POLYTECHNIC ever there was the opportunity the vast majority of LONDON,ENGLAND women in the 18th century worked. “They worked hard, for long hours, and often at heavy tasks.” Yet there are still historians who produce books which imply that society comprises only men and who regard any work done WOMEN,WORK,AND SEXUALPo~mcs IN EIGHTEENTH- by women as “inferior and light-weight.” Women, Work CENTURYENGLAND,by Bridget Hill, 275 pages. Basil and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-Century England sucBlackwell, Oxford, 1989. UK.lZ29.50hardcover. cessfully challenges such sexist and patriarchal assumptions. It provides a wealth of evidence and ammunition As Bridget Hill points out, until the publication of Ivy for those who wish to raise the profile of women historiPinchbeck’s Women Workers and the Industrial Revolucally and argue for the significance of their contribution tion in 1930 little was known about the part played by to social and economic change. women in the process of industrialization and even less MARYMAYNARD about their role in the preindustrial period. That PinchCENTRIZ FORWOMEN’SSTIJDJES beck’s book is still regarded as a classic is a tribute to the UNIVERSITY OFYORK,YORKYOl 5DD UK authoritativeness of that study, as well as a comment on the work that has followed it. Although there is now increasing interest in women’s lives in the 18th and early 19th centuries, few authors have matched either its deEDUCATION FOREQUALITY:WOMEN%RIGHTS PERIODItail or its comprehensiveness. CAISANDWOMEN HIGHEREDUCATION, 1849-1920, by It is this which Bridget Hill sets out to do. Her aim is Patricia Smith Butcher (Contributions in Women’s to provide a synthesis of work produced since Pinchbeck Studies, no. 111). Greenwood Press, Westport, Connectwrote and to examine some areas affecting women’s lives icut, 1989. US $35.00 cloth. which were undeveloped in the earlier text. She offers a reassessment of how women’s experience of work in Women’s suffrage was the major concern addressed by 18th-century England was affected by industrialization the women’s rights press of the period 1849-1920. and other elements of economic, social and technologiAmong the many other issues found in these newspacal change. The result not only makes fascinating readpers, women’s higher education was given significant ing, it also provides a very useful overview of contempoattention. In this slim volume, Patricia Smith Butcher rary debates in the field. manages successfully to describe the debate over womThe book begins by examining current ideas conen’s higher education in the U.S. as it was reflected in the cerning the nature of English society in the period under women’s rights press of the same period. The author consideration, summarizing some of the main work studied 11 women’s rights newspapers, namely, The Agiwhich has changed recent understanding of the time. It tator, The Lily, The New Northwest, The Pioneer, The Queen Bee, The Revolution, The Una, The Woman’s then considers the nature of the work performed by Advocate, The Woman’s Chronicle, The Women’s Jourwomen in the family economy. This involved active participation in the husband’s farm, trade, craft or shop, as nal, The Woman Citizen, and The Woman’s l?ibute. well as the bearing and rearing of children. Bridget Hill Chosen because they were among the best-known newspapers by women and for women during the first seven argues that although it was not equal, women were able to have something approximating a working partnership decades of the women’s rights movement, because of with their men. She goes on to explain how this partnertheir geographical diversity, and because they addressed ship was gradually undermined as the family economy the many issues of women’s rights, these newspapers were an important forum for the question of women’s was transformed, leading to a downward trend in the higher education. demand for women’s labour, a tendency for women’s earnings to decline and a greater polarization in the sexAfter providing a general description of the newspaual division of labour. pers in the first chapter (a photo essay of the editors The rest of the book is devoted to charting various precedes the first chapter), the author devotes the reaspects of women’s experience which tend to remain hidmaining four chapters to the questions of the purpose of den in mainstream historical work. For instance, three women’s education, the struggle for coeducation, women as teachers, and the professional and graduate educachapters document women’s “service” as servants in husbandry; as apprentices in occupations related to agricultion of women. It comes as no surprise that the opinions ture, the clothing trade, and food and drink; and as on the purpose of women’s education vary widely in domestic servants. A further chapter details women these newspapers, from more conservative notions such as the improvement of mothering to the more radical working as washerwomen, charwomen, shopkeepers, hawkers, physicians, migrant harvesters and market garideas of financial independence and pure self-fulfillden labourers. Undoubtedly, however, it is those chapment. Interestingly however, there seems to have been ters detailing the more intimate side of life which are more consensus among these periodicals concerning most likely to hold the reader’s attention. The discussion women as teachers and professional and graduate educaof courtship and marriage, for example, looks at class tion of women. As women became a substantial number differences in women’s expectations and experiences of of the teaching work force, all the newspapers cited deplored the subordination of women to men in terms of these matters. Similarly, the accounts of the circumwages, promotions, and professional recognition. More stances of spinsters and widows graphically demonstrate