Women workers and global restructuring

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Book Reviews

WOMENINUTOPIA:THEIDEOLOGYOFGENDER IN THE AMERICAN OWENITECOMMUNITIES, by Carol A. Kolmerten, 209 pages. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1990. This is a wonderful book. It is historically rich with details of life in 19th century America. Its basic thesis is that while the Owenite communities organized themselves around the concept of equality for all, in particular, equality between the sexes, that promise was not lived up to as the communities began their corporate life together. Kolmerten meticulously details how the promise of equality disappeared underneath the social acceptance of the cult of true womanhood. Woman was said to be equal, but that term was defined by the male leaders in such a way that women were not equal.Women had their own labor as the family’s domestic servant, but she had communal labor assigned to her as well. Thus the Owenite women hada“secondshift”; Owenitemales, leadersandrank and file, did not understand why women complained about their duties. Kolmerten quotes Robert Owen on “the woman problem.” Perhaps the true case of the evil complained of, may be, that, when females who have heretofore been strangers to each other meet together in order to cooperate in some domestic labor, they spend time talking, which should be devoted exclusively to work. Now they cannot talk and work too. . . I can discover no other cause than the one assigned, why female cooperative labor should be more onerous than their individual and unaided exertions in individual society have been. (p. 97). Such a stereotypical attitude toward women permeated the communities, even while the rhetoric of the constitutions spoke about equality. The book’s historical details at times may overwhelm the reader who is less interested in social history and is waiting for a gender analysis. Keep with the book-it is worth the wait. In particular, I found the chapter on Frances Wright to be excellent. It brilliantly captures Kolmerten’s thesis as it shows the painful choices women had to make in Owenite communities. Frances Wright was a leading Owenite, dedicated to both the equality/freedom of slaves and equality of women. She agreed with Owen that educating women was central to an egalitarian community. Her community, Nashoba, was more specific about the rights of women members. “No woman can forfeit her individual rights or independent existence, and no man assert over her any rights or power whatsoever. . . ” (p. 119) However, the community was beset by problems: scarce resources (food, money), a lack of ability to provide more than the bare necessities for members, lack of recruits, but also, the “woman problem” cropped up here too. While public opinion turned against Wright and her community, due to her clarion call for women’s rights and her friendships with leading male social thinkers, Wright’s sister Camilla was also suffering. But her suffering was of someone who was tired of doing all the “dirty work” for the community. Camilla was running Nashoba’s household affairs while others in the community, like her sister, were out trying to change the world. Camilla is a representative of many married Owenite women. They lost power by joining these intentional communities: the power of control over the private

sphere of the home. The private sphere of the home now came under the community’s (meaning the males’) control, while the same community imposed more outsidethe-home work on the wife as well. Thus women in Owenite communities were split. Single women often experienced the communities as freeing, with more social, educational, even somewhat more political power than the larger U.S. society gave them. But their married “sisters” felt more oppressed by the ideology of equality that actually made them work more than in the outside society. Kolmerten’s book allows us, 20th century readers, a glimpse into social systems that tried to institutionalize gender equality but were not able to do so. The wider society intruded on these intentional communities by the way it had previously socialized the residents about appropriate gender roles. The “cult of True Womanhood” was not overthrown, just translated into charters which spoke of equality, but did not allow for it to be lived out in women’s and men’s lives. The message rings true even after 100 years: Until the entire sex/gender system is changed, women will still be second class citizens, bearing the burden of domestic and cultural labor. Kolmerten’s book gives us a further glimpse of how not to achieve equality: Minds and hearts must be changed, not just legal documents. KATHLEEN S. LOWNEY DEPARTMENT OFSOCIOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND CRIMINALJUSTICE VALDOSTASTATECOLLEGE VALDOSTA, GA,USA

GENDERDIFFERENCES:THEIRIMPACTONPUBLICPOLICY, edited by Mary Lou Kendrigan, 256 pages. Greenwood Press, Inc., Westport, CT, 1991. Cloth, US $42.95.

WOMENWORKERSANDGLOBALRESTRUCTURING, edited by Kathryn Ward, 272 pages. ILR Press, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 1990. Cloth, US $32.00, paper, $14.95.

The authors of the work collected in these two books succeed in pushing the examination of women’s working and living conditions beyond discussions of equality as seen in terms of wage packets (important, still) and into the more subtle, contextual arena of perceived quality of life and worth. Kendrigan’s redefinition of equality is timely and quite valuable for those in academic and applied settings alike, and Ward gives us useful examples of how women are being affected by (and are affecting) global industrial restructuring cross-culturally. Both books present arguments that emphasize differences in life experience-by class, ethnicity, age, and genderrather than reducing individuals to “units” equally affected by law and by job loss, as we are presented in many studies. Kendrigan and the authors in her collection concentrate on various experiences of inequality, looking for how individuals are differentially affected by policies.

Book Reviews

She urges us to work not simply for “equality” but for an ofresu/ts.” This book addresses directly what we can read between the lines in public policy: Those who have access to resources gain more by the policies they help shape, and those who are in structural positions of less access to policy formation (e.g., through illiteracy, or through their gender or ethnicity being underrepresented among policymakers) may actually be ill-served by policies that purport to promote equality. Those in the United States, especially those working to reshape policy through legislative means, will probably find the cases Kendrigan provides most useful. The authors in both collections demonstrate quite clearly the interactional effects of assumptions about the traditions treatment women “expect,” the institutional of racism and sexism on shopfloors and in government chambers, and the innovative forms both subjugation and resistance can take. They describe the experiences of women treated as a low-status, marginalized, low-wage work force who have made the globalization of industrial capitalist processes possible but who have, ironically, benefitted from them the least. As illustrated in both collections, women are often culturally (even legislatively) constructed as peripheral workers, willing to work part-time jobs because of more “appropriate” and “primary” domestic duties. This logic, as Hossfeld (in Ward) would call it, is convenient for transnational corporations’ representatives seeking low-wage laborers unlikely to resist. While women in many countries had become, by the 198Os, major (or sole) supporters of their households, the ongoing perception of women as a “noncareer” work force has often prevented the inclusion of women in policies that protect workers’ rights. In the United States, women are no longer tending to leave the labor force during child-rearing years (Monk-Turner, in Kendrigan). This is also now the case in countries like Ireland and Japan (Pyle, and Carney & O’Kelly, in Ward) which once prohibited women of child-rearing age from factory work. Yet, women constitute 2/3 of U.S. adults living in poverty (Richard, in Kendrigan), and women around the world (Ward) are more often working for subsistence, rather than discretionary, income. These two collections offer us valuable examples- Kendrigan in the area of U.S. policy effects and Ward in women’s work experiences internationallyto support arguments many of us are making about the position of women in making, and shaping the meaning of, a living. Drawing, then, from U.S. and international examples, Kendrigan and Ward show us how it is that women can be such a vital labor force and be so often “invisible” as workers. Willenz, in Kendrigan, discusses the exclusion of U.S. military servicewomen from Veteran’s Administration and U.S. Census records so that they have difficulty learning about and receiving medical benefits, and while women were exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam, none were included in the follow-up studies-it being defined as a “male” problem. This “invisibility” of women in particular labor forces is, of course, powerfully useful to male-centric governing bodies. Truelove (in Ward) gives us an example in the Colombian coffee industry, which is defined as a strong domestic industry through which male workers support their families, but which she finds is actually being subsidized by women’s work in transnationaliy controlled mini-maquilas, making shoes. Women as an invisible work force, as de“equality

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scribed in both collections, are supporting global industrialization without recognition. In Kendrigan’s volume, there are specific examples provided of how women are overlooked in policies that are supposed to be “equal,” and these articles force the reader to think about the language and experiences of inequality in useful ways, pushing us to be more critical of policies that are supposed to somehow “even things out.” Dietch, Nowak, and Sneider, for example, argue against the laissez-faire employment practices that reproduce inequalities and, instead, for the conscious linking of employment and economic policies. In essays on compensation of crime victims, retraining of workers after plant closings, working conditions in tourism, head injury survivors and their caregivers, and tax codes, details are given of just how the least vocal constituents are treated unequally under policies with the language of equality but without concern for an “equality of results.” Kendrigan argues powerfully for the contextualization of policy in terms of differential experience of outcomes by gender, age, ethnicity, and income, and she recommends that we (scholars, activists, legislators, all) demand that policy results be evaluated empirically, and often, for an equality of results. Her collection will be instructive for those attempting to do just that. Ward’s collection will be of interest and use to those, in many national settings, focusing on women’s work, especially in transnational industries. The authors weave for us a coherent depiction of women workers in the global factory as (1) desired by transnationals but not always recognized socially as valuable laborers; (2) tending to work for the subsistence of their families rather than for dowries or for luxury spending, unless-as in Java (Wolf)-they are being subsidized by farming; and (3) experiencing less often a “liberation” through their workplace than a social reinforcement of a submissive role. The latter point is carried strongly in chapters on Greek garment workers, women’s role in the Japanese “economic miracle,” and Taiwanese women workers constructed as subordinate in kinship terms and in government prohibitions of organized labor. Tiano makes an interesting critique of, and contribution to, discussions of unemployment and women’s labor in the maquila zone. Hossfeld, in a striking essay that moves the discussion in Ward into workplace resistance, focuses on the microelectronics industry in the Silicon Valley of California. There, “Third World” women from 30 countries work for (mostly) Anglo-American male managers whose ethnocentric logic, with such stereotypes as Asian women being faster workers, is manipulated by the female work force in order to gain better working conditions and time off. Whereas all the authors collected in Ward give us a clear idea of working conditions for women working in transnational industries, Hossfeld gives us analytical tools for forming strategies of resistance that acknowledge perceptions of women workers as “invisible,” or malleable, and turn them back, in subaltern ways, at those most often perceived as controlling the global factory. Those seeking general discussions of public policy formation or the structure of transnational industries would be advised to look for other texts. I heartily recommend Kendrigan’s and Ward’s collections to those searching for a way to connect discussions of gender and equality, policy, and employment to women’s experiences. Kendrigan contributes to our further conceptual-

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Book Reviews

izing equality with her demand for an “equality of results,” supporting that argument well with U.S. cases, and Ward presents skillfully the examples needed to further our understanding of the life experiences of women in many sites of the global factory. ANN E. KINGSOLVER DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY APPLETON, WI, USA

TODE~IREDIFFERENTLY:FEMINISMANDTHEFRENCH CINEMA, by Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, 340 pages. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1990. In her timely study of three French women filmmakers (Dulac, Epstein and Varda), Sandy Flitterman-Lewis sets out to discover if feminist cinema posits a way to desire differently. Within cinema, the standard logic of desire is, of course, masculine. Thus the purpose of Flitterman-Lewis’ book is to determine if there can be an alternative practice which speaks of our desire. In this respect the analysis put forward attempts to renegotiate a new answer to Claire Johnston’s questions on countercinema. A central theme to this book, therefore, will be how can it be made and how can it be talked about. The aim of the book is threefold: to discuss the three filmmakers careers, to locate their work within the historical, industrial and aesthetic contexts and, finally, to analyse their films in relation to the representation of women. At the same time as Flitterman-Lewis’ study successfully accomplishes these goals, it does more in that it takes to task the textual construction of the spectator. Thus Dulac’s contribution is to put female desiring subjectivity onto the screen and to place the spectator alongside that desiring through her filmmaking practice; Epstein’s emphasis on fantasy destabilises the logic of masculine desire and, more often than not, her filmswhich tend to privilege the subjectivity of a girl-childfunction counter-Oedipally; Varda’s deconstructive textual mechanisms proscribe any simplistic identification with the subject and oblige the spectator to ask the questions. Flitterman-Lewis stresses the importance of these women filmmakers within both the feminist context and the aesthetic context. Dulac, prior to making films, was one of the earliest theorists and certainly one of the first avant-guarde theorists of film. She sought to render the characters’ psychologies through the use of rhythm-indeed, as a filmmaker of the silent period, she believed ia strong kinship between cinema and music. FlittermanLewis argues convincingly that Dulac had a pre-semiotic grasp of the interrelation of form and signification. Dulac talks of cinegraphie, in other words, says FlittermanLewis, of images and signs and visual rhythm as a system of signification. Epstein, who until this book had remained critically invisible (because she co-directed her films and only the names of the male directors remained), was an actress, director and consumate editor (principally in the 1930s and 1940s). In her films the focus is on feminine questions-the maternal, the domestic and female bonding (particularly mother-child) - but it is in her reworking basic cinematic structures of pointof-view and identification that she challenges the patriarchal logic of desire. Flitterman-Lewis points to the

subversiveness of Epstein’s films through the quotidian of their narrative settings, the overriding concern with female identity and the foregrounding of issues of relevance to women. Varda’s importance, argues Flitterman-Lewis, in terms of feminism and aesthetics resides in her awareness of the possibilities of a feminist politics of form. Varda’s films can be summed up as sociological cinematic explorations of cultural situations. She explores these with a detached objectivity which she attains through the use of narrative and visual counterpoint. Her distancing techniques, her cinematic style which she terms cidcritureall are deliberately counter-subjective at the same time as they demonstrate how indeed patriarchal constructions of the female body functions. Flitterman-Lewis’ book is an illuminating text on the ((evolution)) of feminist filmic practices from the 1920s to the present day. She examines fully the parameters and articulations of () - a concept which she does not pretend is without its problematics. By addressing that crucial issue through the enunciative theory, however, she furthers the present debate on female enunciation. A scholarly text, engagingly written, it will appeal to students and teachers of film who are not just interested in these filmmakers but who also wish to participate in the wider considerations of countercinema and feminist filmmaking. SUSAN HAYWARD FRENCH STUDIES BIRMINGHAM UNIVERSITY, UK

RACHEL’S DAUGHTERS. NEWLY ORTHODOX JEWISH WOMEN, by Debra Renee Kaufman, 243 pages. Rutgers

University

Press, New Brunswick

and London,

1991.

Why are some women in the late 20th century choosing the life of Jewish Orthodoxy? This fascinating book focusses on what newly Orthodox Jewish women say about themselves rather than on what a feminist theoretical analysis might say about ‘them.’ Debra Renee Kaufman conducted in-depth loosely structured interviews with 150 middle class newly Orthodox Jewish women in the mid-1980s. ‘in five major urban areas across the United States’ (p. 2). and essentially listened to the women describe their reasons for becoming Orthodox, their experiences as Orthodox women, and the meanings they made of their lives. By adopting this approach, Kaufman discovered some crucial shared responses among newly Orthodox Jewish women: disenchantment with modern materialist, individualist culture and sexual freedom; alienation from mainstream feminist preoccupation with workplace equality with men at the expense of a positive valuation of women’s mothering role; the desire to celebrate womanhood and participate in sex-segregated social arrangements in which women support one another, men support women in their roles as nurturers, and male access to their bodies is controlled. As Kaufman points out, contrary to the conventional presentation of ‘religious right’ women as ‘anti-feminist,’ the newly Orthodox Jewish women she met have quite a lot in common with radical feminists! Like radical feminists, their response to the conditions of modern life is woman-centred; their concern is to value women and to assert women’s values. The difference lies in their accep-