Sex Roles, Vol. 11, Nos. 1/2, 1984

B o o k Rev iews

Older Women. Edited by Elizabeth W. Markson. Lexington, Massachusetts, Lexington Books, D. C. Heath & Company, 1983, 326 pp., $29.95 (cloth).

Markson's book of readings is one of several books on older women that have come out in the last seven or eight years since this topic became timely. In the early 1970s most publishers probably would not have touched a book on older women with a 10-foot pole. Then in the late 1970s this became a "hot topic" and many publishers rushed books on older women into print, often with jazzy titles to disguise the real nature of the subjects. The rush of the publishing was apparent in most of these books. In her introduction, Markson deals very briefly with some of the factors that made older women a timely topic. She points to historical events and cultural and demographic facts that increased awareness of older women as the majority of older people and as the sex more at risk for poverty, loneliness, and institutional- ization in old age.

This book of original contributions on older women has more substance than many of its predecessors, and its title is straightforward regarding the subject matter. In soliciting original papers for this volume, Markson was able to get 21 scholars to focus on older womenmno small feat. For this, she is to be commended.

The book is divided into four parts: "Changing Bodies, Changing Selves"; "Older Women in Labor"; "Without and Within the Family"; and "Health Issues in Later Life." Each part is preceded by a brief preview of the articles in the section. Each of the four parts contains two to six chapters (15 articles). In addition, the editor's brief two-page Epilogue poses two questions: "What produces a good old age for women?" and "What are the prospects for future old women?" One can glean an answer to the first question from the readings in this book: health, wealth, and companionship. None of the authors, however, focus on the second question.

The majority of contributors to this volume are sociologists, as is the editor. The topics covered reflect this background. The two major exceptions are the articles in the health issues section by physicians. The

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purpose of the book, according to the Preface, is " to capture some of the social diversity of growing old, female style." T h e v o l u m e fulfills this objective by providing articles on a variety of dimensions of the lives o f older women from diverse walks of l i fe--surburban women and shopping-bag women of the central city; ever-single elderly as well as the married and widowed; and older female factory workers in New England. There is no unifying framework for this book except the subject of older women and the editor's at tempt at organization through the Introduction and Epilogue. The reader of this book will not get a comprehensive view of the lives of older women and the issues they face.

This book is not for the instructor looking for a single book of readings for an undergraduate course ~ o n older women. This book could serve as a supplementary text, but its cost may make that unfeasible. The instructor will want the students to read books and articles that focus on issues more central to the study of older women than some of these characters are. For example, issues such as the feminization of poverty, the social displacement of widows, and work versus family caregiver roles are dealt with peripherally, if at all. Articles that focus on central areas of concern in relation to older women are Maximiliane Szinovacz's chapter on women's retirement, an article on family relationships of older women by Beth Hess and Joan Waring, a French article on menopause translated by Markson, and a study of the sexuality of older women by Barbara Turner and Catherine Adams.

Most of the articles in this book are interesting, and several present information not readily available elsewhere. Articles on changing appearance in the middle years and on women's health clubs are examples. One of the most interesting articles, at least to the reviewer, is the analysis of the historical records of the Home for Aged Women (HAW), founded in Boston in 1949. The author, Brian Gratton, is an historian. In the 19th century and early 20th century the lot of older women berefet of family and without financial resources was even more stark than today. Then as now, the wages from "women ' s work" provided a poor living and a miserable old age for women making their own way in the world.

This book should be in our libraries, and it may be used by instructors teaching courses on women's issues, mainly because there are as yet no really good alternatives. Older women have been relatively "invisible" in American society. It is hoped that books like this will serve as stimulants to further research and theory in an area in need of both. At the least, perhaps the interest of the scholars who wrote the articles for the Markson volume will continue.

Vivian Wood University of Wisconsin--Madison

Book Reviews 169

Sexual Divisions: Patterns and Processes. Edited by Mary Evans and Clare Ungerson. New York, Methuen, Inc., 1983, 214 pp., $11.95 (paper).

In April, 1980, a conference on the "institutionalization of sex differences" was held at the University of Kent at Canterbury. A collection of some of the papers presented at that conference has been published in Sexual Divisions: Patterns and Processes, edited by Mary Evans and Clare Ungerson, Lecturers respectively in sociology and social policy and administration at the University of Kent. Though the essays (and their rejoinders) explore a variety of topics, they share common assumptions regarding women's place in society and the economy. The authors agree that women have been oppressed by a patriarchal society, capitalism has contributed to the oppression of women, and current social science analysis has not adequately modified old models and assumptions to deal with :feminist issues. Mary Evans' introduction points out that although the authors assume the "universal subordination of women and their limited appearance in traditional scholarship," they are more concerned with the ':'degree and means of this subordination." Thus, the articles examine "specific social institutions in order to illuminate those social processes that both assume and maintain female subordination."

Six essays are reproduced in Sexz:al Divisions. Two discuss women's employment; one deals with the effects of urbanization; one comments on patterns of learning in early childhood; one analyzes psychiatric evaluation and treatment of women; and the last explores family law and sexual equality in the 1950's.

Of the essays in the book, three merit notice because of their general applicability to feminist social science. In an essay entitled "Female Unemployment in the United Kingdom," authors Bernard Corry, Jim Nugent, and David Saunders attempt to explain "certain features of the female labour market." Using figures from the British Department of Unemployment, representing women who have registered as unemployed, the economists point out that before 1974 female unemployment demonstrated no exceptional trend, but between 1974 and 1976 thefemale rate of unemployment more than doubled. This change, they conclude, "cannot be ascribed to features of the labour market peculiar to females." They assume that it is due simply tb the "general fall in the level of aggregate demand." In a strong rejoinder, Irene Bruegel points out the need to question the "value of traditional economic concepts and practices for understanding trends in women's unemployment." Principally, she argues that economists cannot use conventional categories related to the concept of unemployment. Married women regard themselves as working even when they are not employed outside the home. Thus, they do not register as

170 Book Reviews

unemployed even when they are actually without a paying position. Frequently, women will accept jobs that come along, even though they do not consider themselves actually looking for work. Thus, female behavior vis-a-vis the labor market is significantly different from men's, and traditional concepts of unemployment do not apply.

A second and related essay by Teresa Perkins, entitled " A New Form of Employment: A Case Study of Women's Part-Time Work in Coventry," explores the issue of part-time employment using the example of a single town. The statistics Perkins collected on women's employment indicate that over the past 15 years increasing numbers of women have undertaken jobs in the services rather than in industry, and a growing proportion of those jobs have been part-time. This trend represents increasing exploitation of women, for part-time jobs are generally lower paying and provide neither job security nor fringe benefits. Jenkins suggests that one neglected aspect of part-time work is the degree to which it is a "form of employment demanded by employers rather than merely provided by them in order to get [female] labour." The point seems to be that employers find part-time work more flexible and cheaper than full-time work, and therefore, more desirable. From the point of view of women, particularly married women, part-time work may be the only alternative rather than the desired solution. Given the responsibilities of home and children and frequently the traveling distance between home and work, part-time employment is often these women's only realistic possibility.

A third essay, "City and Home: Urban Housing and the Sexual Division of Space," by Linda McDowell, relates to housing patterns and their impact on women. Britain's commitment to single-family housing combined with industrialization has led to considerable isolation of women in the suburbs. This is an issue which United States historians of women have recognized in their country, and which feminists from Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Betty Friedan have criticized as a particular handicap for women. Here we see the same problem demonstrated in contemporary Great Britain. McDowell states that the "anti-urban ideal in British planning policies, and what might be called a domestic ethic emphasizing the importance of the home as a haven and as a woman's place" have dictated land use and housing policies and have in effect segregated housing (and therefore women) "to peripheral areas of the city." The separation of work and home is thus both an "indicator of modern sexual divisions" and a characteristic of modern urban society. For the feminist social scientist, the issue to confront is the way in which urban space is organized in order to accommodate the growing number of women who both maintain a household and work outside the home.

Overall, Sexual Divisions is a work of considerable interest to researchers and teachers in fields related to the history, psychology, and

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sociology of women. The perspective of Britain is instructive for those principally familiar with the United States; the strong emphasis on methodology contributes to current feminist efforts in this country; and the consistent Marxist feminist analysis is one significant and widely accepted approach to women's issues in America.

Myra L. Rich Department o f History

University o f Colorado at Denver

Women in Law. Cynthia Fuchs Epstein. Garden City, New York, Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1983, 399 PP., $10.95.

Women in Law is a scholarly tour de force of stability and change engendered by, and encountered by, women in the legal profession from the mid 1960s until the present. In addition to the Introduction, the book ,consists of six sections of 1 to 14 chapters each. The first three sections are devoted to the profession: the participants, their education and the many different areas of expertise and types of practice. The last three sections treat the private and personal complexities engendered by being a woman in a typically masculine profession.

There are many positive signs and reasons for optimism in the book: (a) Old stereotypes have been demolished. Given opportunity, numbers of women have entered the legal profession and have been successful. (b) There has been a dramatic change in the number of women becoming lawyers since the early 1960s. In the 1960s, "women constituted 4°70 of the profession, about 7,000 according to the U.S. Census and even less, only 3.5% or 6,348, according to statistics published by the American Bar Foundat ion . . . Ten years later, the picture had totally changed. By 1970 there were 13,000 and in 1980 62,000 (from 4% to 12.4°70). The proportion of women in the law school rose from 4% in the 1960s to 8% by 1970, and then to 33% by 1980" (p. 5). (c) Entry of women into the profession has broadened the profession's responsiveness to the underserved sectors of society. (d) Since the law often provides access to important positions in business, government, and politics, and more women may be entering these positions in the future.

On the negative side, no matter how things change, much remains the same. Inability to have lunch in the all-male clubs almost seems laughable--except it is still true. More subtle forms of discrimination may still bar significant numbers of women from becoming partners or judges.

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From a psychological point of view, I was struck by the pervasive and constant "double-binds" which all professional women must face in so many aspects of their lives. As the author said in the Introduction to the 1983 edition, " I continue to be impressed with the fact that the experiences of women in the law and their problems and triumphs are illustrative of women's experiences in a wide range of occupations."

As a psychologist, I also look forward to the day when a social scientist can do "qualitative" or "quantitative" research without apology and without criticism of the other approach. (Other labels for methodologies might help this cause.)

This book should have a place in all law libraries and on reading lists in many courses, such as psychology of careers and courses in women's studies. Any woman should enjoy reading this book. It is obviously the product of many years of work and thought. Many professional women will wish they had written it.

Maurine A. Fry Arizona State University

Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth- Century Russia. Barbara Alpern EngeL New York, Cambridge University Press, 1983, 203 pp., $29.50.

It all sounds oddly familiar: young women of good family who dress "carelessly," espouse radical views, go in for midwifery and medicine as vehicles for social change. Yet these young women with bobbed hair and blue glasses who stride about the city by themselves are reading George Sand, not Shulamith Firestone, and they are discussing not civil rights, but freeing the serfs. The place is Russia and the time is the nineteenth century. The story begins with the rise of the intelligentsia in the 1830s during the repressive regime of Nicholas I, and focuses on the role of women in the reform and revolutionary movements of the 1860s and 1870s. The theme of the book is the interaction between personal and political.

In the early period, the personal dominated. Both men and women of the intelligentsia were influenced by European Romanticism to attribute special value to personal relationships and to elevate personal sensibility against the claims of a strict (and obsolescing) social order. When the repressive regime of Nicholas I ended with his death in 1855, among the intellectual and social currents which burst forth was a belief that attacking despotism in society required a transformation of the partriarchal family.

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The discussions about family life and the role of women came under the heading of the "woman ques t ion ." . . . There emerged three approaches . . . . One sought to liberalize the family and the relations between the sexes and to expand women's prerogatives of the public sphere, within politically acceptable limits. Another, which contemporaries called "nihilism," advocated more radical measures, contending that women should liberate themselves from "family depotism," and that the patriarchal family should be radically altered and even, in the opinion of some, abolished al- together. The third . . . concentrated on social political change rather than personal change, wishing to postpone until the socialist future the resolution of many issues, the woman question included. [p. 461

"In the second half of the 1850s, Russians published unprecedented numbers of articles, books and journals suggesting ways the family might be reformed and the new generation might be turned into better human beings and more responsible citizens." (19. 51). Women were being urged simultaneously to give greater attention to child care so as to create the proper citizens of the reformed society, and to educate themselves "for the inevitable struggle and sacrifice."

The radical movements of the 1860s demanded a total restructuring the existing social and cultural order. "Nihilism was a powerful and passionate reaction, not against the political depotism, but against the moral depotism that weighs upon the private and inner life of the individual" (p. 63). In this intellectual climate, some women joined the personal and the political in demanding freedom from "family despotism" and attempting to live autonomous lives. The new opportunities for women's education, especially in medicine, which came into existence towards the end of the decade provided something of a base for these "new women." Meanwhile, "the new radical community that emerged early in the 1870s provided a sympathetic milieu . . . . Populists tried to be egalitarian in their practice, and they were particularly scrupulous in their treatment of women . . . . Women, like men, joined populist circles because of shared ideals, but many of the women also found in these closely knit, egalitarian groups an emotional substitute for the family ties they had given up, and this gave added intensity to the women's political commitment." (p. 106).

But as the radicals became more extreme in their views--with a group of terrorists plotting assassinations, making bombs, and digging tunnels counterposed to those still "going to the people" in village and fac toryban interesting thing happened to the women's assertion of the personal. Some women became m o r e rigorous than men in their pursuit of the political goals, more sacrificing of self, more insistent in putting personal happiness aside in the interest of working for the revolution. "Women who had been steeped in religion during childhood and who had learned the virtues of self-sacrifice at mother's knee" (p. 154) could relatively easily use these

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skills in self-abnegation to meet the demands of the movement. The propensity to self-sacrifice became the basis of a female political specialization. It had its advantages: , 'The women's moral fervor, their 'spiritual beauty,' earned populists the sympathy of a sector of the educated public" (p. 154). But there is evidence that it also made the women in some respects less effective organizers--totally unsympathetic to the interests of women factory workers in "clothes, lovers and gossip" (p. 149). For good or ill, the women radicals' propensity for self-sacrifice "contributed to the creation of a sort of mythology, which defined the revolutionary woman as limitlessly devoted and endlessly self-sacrificing, a martyr-heroine" (p. 155).

Those who want to carry the story further may want to look at Gall Lapidus' Women in Soviet Society (University of California Press, 1978) for an account of the building of Soviet socialism on the backs of women's double day.

The story is documented with a wealth of personal histories, which obviously represent a tremendous effort of assembly, as well as a commendable attempt to link form and content. Since the subject is the personal and political, social generalization should be linked to individual story. "Personal politics" must be about persons. But here the historian confronts a difficulty that has so far defeated most writers in psychology-has the same problem and has struggled with it longer. These synoptic personal histories, these "cases ," lack the juice of life. We cannot respond to them as we would to persons, or even to characters in a novel. We cannot feel the passions that animated these lives; we can only confront the facts as data. In social research, the concept of "personal politics" make demand not only on content but on style--demands that we have not yet determined how to meet.

Lisa RedfieM Peattie Massachusetts Institute o f Technology