Women in the Modern World: Their Education and Their Dilemmas

by Mirra Komarovsky

Overview

In Women in the Modern World, noted feminist and sociologist Mirra Komarovsky begins with a consideration of biology. Reflecting on these now-familiar arguments that the natural biological differences between women and men dictate different social roles, Komarovsky demolishes these arguments by carefully reviewing studies that find sex differences in cognitive abilities, achievement, and psychological predispositions. In successive chapters, Komarovsky explores how differential socialization produces the differences that we think we observe between women and men, and how gender inequality disfigures the lives of women, men, and the relationships between them. One chapter examines how it plays out among college students at Barnard in the first college generation after the Second World War. Many of these bright and ambitious women feel trapped between their talents and the constraints of feminine domesticity mapped out for them by social expectations. Successive chapters examine the costs of choosing either alternative. Full-time homemakers feel, at best, overworked and undervalued, and at worst resentful and bitter. Many regret the 'painful reorganization of life,' and long, instead 'for the relinquished occupation.' It is this longing, she argues that leads so many women to 'flit from one evanescent interest to another, arriving at late or middle age without anything that would given meaning or continuity to their lives.'

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780759107274
Publisher:	AltaMira Press
Publication date:	08/18/2004
Series:	Classics in Gender Studies , #6
Edition description:	Updated Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.82(w) x 9.24(h) x 1.14(d)

About the Author

Mirra Komarovsky was professor emeritus of sociology at Barnard College and Past-President of the American Sociological Associaiton. Michael S. Kimmel teaches at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Table of Contents

	Series Editor's Introduction	xi
	Foreword	xxvii
1.	Women's Education under Fire	3
	The "Neo-Antifeminists"	5
	Alma Mater in Retrospect	11
2.	Where Angels Fear to Tread	18
	Do Psychological Tests Support the Case for a Feminine curriculum?	19
	Psychoanalysis and Women	31
	Is Every Professional Woman a "Lady In the Dark?"	40
	An Alternative Diagnosis	48
3.	Under Twenty-one	53
	Learning the Feminine Role	53
	The Family Confronts the Girl with Equally Compelling But Contradic-Tory Pressures	67
	Some Traditional Stereotypes Versus Current Realities	76
	Ethics and the Sexes	87
	Looking Ahead: What College Girls Want Out of Life	92
4.	The Homemaker and Her Problems	100
	Some Vital Facts	100
	The Overworked Mother	107
	Why is the Homemaker Discontented?	115
	The Career-Minded Homemaker	127
	The Problems of Leisure	153
5.	Home Plus a Job	166
	Background Facts	166
	Some Contrasting Portraits	169
	A Happy Career Wife	169
	A Problem-ridden Marriage	173
	A New-style Feminist	179
	Family Relationships and Home Responsibilities of Employed Homemakers	185
	The Job	199
6.	Can College Educate for Marriage and Parenthood?	208
	The old Guard and the "Functionalists"	212
	Immunity to "Culture Shock"	218
	Social Roots of Personal Conflicts	222
	Understanding Oneself	225
	Student Counseling	229
	Romance and Reality	234
	Family Relationships: Problems Foreseen are Conflicts Avoided	239
	Parenthood	245
	Let the Men in On It, Too	250
7.	Towards a Philosophy of Women's Education	258
	Why Not a Distinctively Feminine Curriculum	259
	Some Needed Educational Reforms	271
	Spanning the Gap Between Classroom and Reality: Field Work and the Casebook	274
	Education for Citizenship	278
	Vocational Preparation	283
	Education is not Enough	288
	Notes	301
	Guide to the Case Material	313
	Index	315