Content area
Full text
Working Women in America: Split Dreams. Sharlene Hesse-Biber and Gregg Lee Carter. New York: Oxford University Press. 2000. 235 pages. $21.95.
Working Women offers readers a comprehensive yet manageable exploration of the world of women and work. Of note is the authors' inclusion throughout the text of women of color and women in developing countries. Broad and diverse levels of analysis are employed; the differential effects of legal, economic, religious, and family structures on race, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference, age, and location are examined. Hesse-Biber and Carter explain globalization and the relationship of women working in Western capitalist countries and women working in developing countries as well. These efforts create a more useful and comprehensive picture of women and work. Overall, the book is highly readable and quite suitable for undergraduates. The use of photos and narratives as well as the authors' straightforward writing style will certainly keep students engaged in the text.
The authors' discussion unfolds within the context of sociological theory. The first chapter presents functionalism as the foil to the authors' structuralist perspective. At first it seemed that the functionalist "straw man" would be old hat. After all, functionalism has been well critiqued for quite some time. However, the authors show that functionalism is alive and well in modern manifestations of attitudes toward gender and work in the United States. Their interesting argument for the relevance of opposing functionalism becomes a deconstruction of common attitudes toward women and work. For example, the authors successfully break down standard definitions of work. Arguing that many conceptions of work stem from the functionalist stance that women and men are "supposed" to serve different labor functions, the authors counter this functionalism in several ways. They show that definitions of women's work roles have actually been male-oriented, with the invisibility and invalidation of women's labor as consequences. The contribution of women's unpaid labor is reconsidered and women's long-standing participation as workers is illuminated. Structuralism explains how the organizations and practices of institutions serve to "confine the majority of women...