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the_lady_lily) wrote2011-02-27 09:52 pm
the_lady_lily) wrote2011-02-27 09:52 pm
Entry tags:
Bibliography
9 - For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts' Advice to Women – Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English
This was an excellent book - it was first published in the late 1980s, and updated in 2005 to take in the most modern developments. Essentially it looks at the rise of the Expert in advice given to women, covering some of the same territory as Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique (albeit from a more scholarly angle), but expanding beyond the range of household duties to experts' advice to women on medical issues, sexuality, childcare and lifestyle as well. The authors track the changes that occured with the industrial revolution, when women began to work outside the home, after the second world war, and with the rise of the 'single' lifestyle.
There's fascinating stuff in here, not least of all the completely insane competing narratives sold to mothers about either being too smothering or too destructive towards their children during the 1950s - no wonder nobody felt they could get it right. But, of course, the authority of the Expert (and the Scientific Expert, no less) is still more or less unquestioned in our day by the majority of people, so no wonder that women felt so confused about which trendy theory they were supposed to be following now.
Even worse are the trends in treating women's medical complaints which follow fad rather than proper medical studies, not to mention a general tendency to assume that everything that goes wrong with a woman's body is connected to her reproductive system. (There is another book that's got a lot of press recently about how the whole 'scientific proof' of women being programmed by evolution to be gatherers while men are programmed to be hunters, along with all other supposedly gender-based scientific differences, being absolute tosh, but this book foreshadows that point.)
One issue I should raise is that Ehrenreich and English are only interested in American women in their time period. Which is fair enough - the social pressures forming women at this period are completely different in America than they are in the UK. However, it seems only fair to mention that the book focuses on the one specific country, although it does a reasonably good job of dealing with class and racial differences instead of discussing the monolith of 'woman'.
I am hoping that most of my female readers already bring a healthy dose of scepticism with them whenever they read that something has been 'scientifically proven' to be good for you or bad for you or the next best way to parent or... well, anything that's sold to you, as a woman, from an Expert whose sole authority lies in their Expertness. That said, if you are interested in the history of Things Told To Women By Experts and how contradictory the shifting narratives are, this is a well-written and informative book to read.
Through the Brick Wall: How to Job-Hunt in a Tight Market – Kate Wendleton
This was recommended by the authors of So What Are You Going To Do With That? as being a Useful Book. In some ways, it was a useful book. The main point of it is that One Never Gives Up - No is never No, you just keep going. In some ways, it's trying to be an updated What Colour Is Your Parachute? for the 1990s, and as such I have to say that I disliked some of the very pushy, authoritative, and frankly occasionally rather amoral advice given. (Alright, the advice itself was often fine, but the tone grated.)
It did give me a new perspective on material I'd read in other books, particularly in terms of how to efficiently prepare for your job search, manage your research, really work out what it is you're after. Even though I didn't follow up some of the exercises here in quite the same way I have from Parachute, I still found things sticking and bubbling away as I was reading, which I found helpful in clarifying some issues. However, this book is also written essentially as the 'take away' manual from something called the The Five O'Clock Club, which Wendleton founded. It's a job hunting support group, which seeks to provide support to job hunters as well as useful strategies for them to use. The original New York group seems to have been aimed mainly at business executives or people interested in sales (i.e. not my profile), and a lot of the book is very targeted at that audience.
Also - very American. I am not sure it would transfer as well as Parachute to a UK readership, so probably best not to try. Even for an American reader, I suspect that some of the stuff here is very dated (no reference to e-mail, for instance), and it's much more of a book from which to pick and choose what's helpful for you. So worth mining, but only after you've read some other things first and know which gaps this will helpfully fill.
This was an excellent book - it was first published in the late 1980s, and updated in 2005 to take in the most modern developments. Essentially it looks at the rise of the Expert in advice given to women, covering some of the same territory as Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique (albeit from a more scholarly angle), but expanding beyond the range of household duties to experts' advice to women on medical issues, sexuality, childcare and lifestyle as well. The authors track the changes that occured with the industrial revolution, when women began to work outside the home, after the second world war, and with the rise of the 'single' lifestyle.
There's fascinating stuff in here, not least of all the completely insane competing narratives sold to mothers about either being too smothering or too destructive towards their children during the 1950s - no wonder nobody felt they could get it right. But, of course, the authority of the Expert (and the Scientific Expert, no less) is still more or less unquestioned in our day by the majority of people, so no wonder that women felt so confused about which trendy theory they were supposed to be following now.
Even worse are the trends in treating women's medical complaints which follow fad rather than proper medical studies, not to mention a general tendency to assume that everything that goes wrong with a woman's body is connected to her reproductive system. (There is another book that's got a lot of press recently about how the whole 'scientific proof' of women being programmed by evolution to be gatherers while men are programmed to be hunters, along with all other supposedly gender-based scientific differences, being absolute tosh, but this book foreshadows that point.)
One issue I should raise is that Ehrenreich and English are only interested in American women in their time period. Which is fair enough - the social pressures forming women at this period are completely different in America than they are in the UK. However, it seems only fair to mention that the book focuses on the one specific country, although it does a reasonably good job of dealing with class and racial differences instead of discussing the monolith of 'woman'.
I am hoping that most of my female readers already bring a healthy dose of scepticism with them whenever they read that something has been 'scientifically proven' to be good for you or bad for you or the next best way to parent or... well, anything that's sold to you, as a woman, from an Expert whose sole authority lies in their Expertness. That said, if you are interested in the history of Things Told To Women By Experts and how contradictory the shifting narratives are, this is a well-written and informative book to read.
Through the Brick Wall: How to Job-Hunt in a Tight Market – Kate Wendleton
This was recommended by the authors of So What Are You Going To Do With That? as being a Useful Book. In some ways, it was a useful book. The main point of it is that One Never Gives Up - No is never No, you just keep going. In some ways, it's trying to be an updated What Colour Is Your Parachute? for the 1990s, and as such I have to say that I disliked some of the very pushy, authoritative, and frankly occasionally rather amoral advice given. (Alright, the advice itself was often fine, but the tone grated.)
It did give me a new perspective on material I'd read in other books, particularly in terms of how to efficiently prepare for your job search, manage your research, really work out what it is you're after. Even though I didn't follow up some of the exercises here in quite the same way I have from Parachute, I still found things sticking and bubbling away as I was reading, which I found helpful in clarifying some issues. However, this book is also written essentially as the 'take away' manual from something called the The Five O'Clock Club, which Wendleton founded. It's a job hunting support group, which seeks to provide support to job hunters as well as useful strategies for them to use. The original New York group seems to have been aimed mainly at business executives or people interested in sales (i.e. not my profile), and a lot of the book is very targeted at that audience.
Also - very American. I am not sure it would transfer as well as Parachute to a UK readership, so probably best not to try. Even for an American reader, I suspect that some of the stuff here is very dated (no reference to e-mail, for instance), and it's much more of a book from which to pick and choose what's helpful for you. So worth mining, but only after you've read some other things first and know which gaps this will helpfully fill.