Word: woman
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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VIRGINIA WOOLF once described woman as "the most discussed animal in the universe." A popular subject in anything from sonnets to surgery, she has been serenaded, dissected, romanticized and analyzed by generations of literati, medical men, scientists and students. If these men fixed their eyes intently on the figure of woman, however, the historian remained somewhat more aloof. Usually, in his considered judgement, women were essentially unimportant to his field ('the study of man'), and he dealt with them incidentally...
...Good by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English should be a bestseller in this market. A comprehensive, readable history of Americanwomen and their integration into a male-dominated society, the book reinterprets traditional American history, serving it up in a palatable form to the more or less liberated woman of the seventies. Subtitled 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women, the study recounts not only what women did, but how men reacted. Specifically, Ehrenreich and English show how over two centuries the experts in the medical and social "sciences" redefined the experiences of women, and used their professional authority...
Ehrenreich and English had to cover a lot of ground to get from the domestic and industrious woman of the pre-industrial era in England and America to the Cosmopolitan woman of the 1970s. Although they have a flair for interesting detail, they don't offer enough rigorous evidence to qualify as scholarly literature. Tending to linger over obvious cases of misguided science like the gory methods doctors used in the 19th century to 'cure' their patients or the moral weaknesses of contemporary pop psychology, the authors gloss over some of the more complex issues...
...feminist sentiments also make some employers feel guilty about hiring others to do their dirty work, and the problem has often been debated in women's groups. Says Pam Gray, a Los Angeles attorney: "I am so grateful that I am probably less demanding of my cleaning woman than I am of another type of agent, like an accountant or a travel agent...
However, the profile of the domestic worker as a poor, ill-educated woman is slowly changing, as students, artists, writers and housewives adopt household work as a flexible form of employment. Their families are not always pleased. "My aunt babbles on about my editing and my traveling, but she never mentions my cleaning," says one part-time editor. After quitting a managerial job at Joseph Magnin, Taryn Stenman, 22, worked as a maid for six months and found that she made so many connections as a result of cleaning homes that she started her own catering service. "People...