I have to say that I wasn’t as pleased with the reading this
week as I have been with the past two. I thought the book was good and
informative I just think that it is very outdated. The book itself obviously
looked very old when I bought it but it wasn’t until I started reading it that
I realized just how outdated it really was. I wasn’t even 10 pages in and I
decided to look at the copyright date of the book – 1982. Not to sound like an angry feminist, but I wasn’t even born in
1982. I think good portions of the people in this class were not born in 1982. Most of the research was done in the 60's and 70's.
Don’t get me wrong some of the information in the text was very good and
informative; I think that many of what these reports say may still follow true and translate to today. I feel like even a book on women’s/gender issues written when I was in
high school in the early 2000’s would be outdated. For example, just on gender and sexuality, when I was in high school we talked about gay/lesbian issues and had a club. We did not talk about trans-gender or bisexuality. It wasn't until 3-4 years later when I went to college that this became the norm. Maybe I went into this with
my hopes too high. I was excited to be reading about gender and women’s issues
because for one I am a woman and secondly I am very interested in these issues.
Again, I am not trying to completely knock the book or the selection of the
book. I think that in Chapter 3 when Gilligan gets into talking about abortion
and other sex-related topics is interesting because these topics are very prevalent
in young girls these days. It would be very interesting to see the numbers and
statistics of what happened 5-10 years ago rather than 30 years ago.
I could not agree more Kim. In fact we had discussed some of those issues together in class. I think that women have been breaking the once heavily fortified barrier that was holding them down. They are finding more opportunities and moving up in society as equal contributors. This book discussed issues from a different time period where there America was not in recession where most house holds could have a middle class life style with just one bread winner. Now a days, two people need to make middle class salaries to live comfortably.
ReplyDeleteThanks Kim, for bringing a focus to this—which is a habit I usually have–that of looking at publishing dates.
ReplyDeleteBeing so taken with Gilligan's conclusions regarding the "ground" of "care," "hurt," and "selfishness," I started to lose sight of the fact of the age in which this was written.
I like Dennis' point regarding the new "dual household" which points to both the greater number of career women and the long period of wage stagnation that has occured within the middle class. Candidate Warren, of course, has been studying these issues for many years. And, of course, a seeming "awakening" has occured with an explosive reaction—finally.
Some women have spoken about the concentration on "careers." Has this shifted? It seems as though those in the women's movement have become more cognizant of that career-family balance.
Onward . . .
There’s nothing more frustrating than reading outdated information. As a history major I share Kim’s frustration with work that seems to be generationally driven. The fact of the matter is sexuality isn’t something that’s disclosed from schools and social settings. To my knowledge sexuality was something that was talked about openly both inside and outside the classroom. For that matter my schools supported a Gay-Straight Alliance. I can remember kids not being afraid to come out about their sexuality because our school had a tolerance policy. With that said, I’ll have to agree with Kim about how this book speaks to an outdated theory, however some information was useful. In addition women in modern day society are dealing with many different issues than ones from 30 years ago. Overall the book discussed issues that we as people are way beyond.
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