Abstract
If you are 40 years old or younger, you were born in 1966 or later. This means that you had not yet been born when Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Even a precocious reader of age 10 in 1976 probably would not have read Friedan's book in the closet. Birth control pills came into widespread use in the late 1960s and 1970s, so if you turned 18 in 1984, there was little difficulty obtaining them. In 1973 the case of Roe v. Wade overturned highly restrictive abortion laws and opened the door to access the full range of women's health care. Women's right to vote was established in 1920, almost 90 years ago, but 144 years after the 1776 Declaration gave voting rights to White men. Perhaps a more vivid example of the recency of women's legal rights in American life is that a woman could not obtain a credit card alone, without the cosignature of her husband or other guarantor, as late as the 1970s.
For those over 40 who remember some of this history, but tend to believe that feminist historians' description of widespread misogyny in the United States is exaggerated, this book of short readings will be enlightening. These readings remind us that the arguments advanced to keep women in their place were widespread in U.S. society, not opinions of the few. Reading the articles, one recognizes that similar arguments are made today, in different rhetoric, to justify more subtle forms of misogyny and discrimination.
S. T. Joshi's collection of primary source readings vividly presents the various arguments advanced over the years by men and women in the United States to keep women in their place. The selections are short excerpts of approximately 3 to 10 pages each and were written from 1765 to 1979. The authors justify the historic discrimination against women in all areas of life: education, the home, politics, and religion. The same arguments advanced 250 years ago in these readings are echoed today in popular, academic, and corporate culture: (a) women are intellectually inferior, (b) their fragile physical and mental constitution make them unfit for strenuous physical or intellectual work, (c) their nature and personalities make them better suited to care for the home and children, and (d) their higher moral standing causes them to civilize men and be the moral arbiters of society.
Each selection is preceded by a brief introduction, which places the material in historical context and introduces the author. The articles are grouped into 12 topic areas, and full bibliographic information and some references in the texts are explained in the endnotes. Joshi's book is his third edition of original source readings. Each book uses a similar format. The other two volumes are collections on racism and religious intolerance, Documents of American Prejudice and Atheism: A Reader.
In this book, I found the topic groupings too vague and sometimes artificial given that the arguments often overlap and are repeated. A chronological ordering might have been more informative and would lend itself better as a complement to a women's history course. An alternate organization would have allowed more explicit ties to the events that spawned the writings.
There are no writings or commentary about women of color or lesbians. Is this because it is difficult to find sources of this type or were these women seen as unnecessary for commentators to even write about, perhaps because it was already assumed they were unequal, even to the normal woman? I was also curious about who responded to these arguments and writings at the time. These questions beg for longer introductions with more connections to events of the time or significant people associated with the women's cause.
This book could be used effectively in an introductory course in women's history, as a companion to a comprehensive textbook. Reference to these original documents would enliven the discussions and make real the issues that affected and affect women's lives. The title references a woman's low place in the hierarchy. Hopefully, the title will be reinterpreted by those who read these documents as an attempt to help modern women and men identify with women's struggles and their efforts to create their rightful place and voice in all aspects of society.