A HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE WEST, VOL. 5 Toward a Cultural Identity in the Twentieth Century

Has this century been the best of times for women? How have the promises of freedom, parity with men, full participation in society, actually been met amid all the transformations and upheavals witnessed by the 20th century? This, the fifth volume in the series, brings the history of women up to the present, placing it in the context of the momentous events and profound social changes that have marked recent times. The history of women over the past 80 years is one of both fierce repression and unparalleled freedom, and this book reveals how political power in particular has been both wielded by women and used against them: for example, in wartime policies; the practices of the fascists and Nazis; in the conception and workings of the welfare state; and in the ideology and reality of Soviet-style Communism. Throughout this text, we observe the struggle for women's rights; early feminism coping with the challenges of mass politics, Communism, nationalism, and Freudianism; reappearing later as the women's liberation movement of the 1960s. This history is rich in images: the flapper; the woman liberated by the Pill; Superwoman of the 80s, reputedly capable of juggling career, children and lovers without missing a beat - all decoded here to expose the reality they represent and often distort. Thus we learn how the recent history of women is also a history of representation, a story in which transformations in sexual roles and relations are worked out, resisted, and complicated among the trappings of modernity, science and popular culture. What emerges from this work is some sense of how history itself is influenced by gender, of how recent women's history is not separate but different from that constructed by men and, as such, offers a new perspective on the way social roles have evolved, together with various systems of ideas and representations.

The concluding volume in this highly praised series continues the provocative survey of the role of women in our century through the 70s...This series persists in generating much excitement as a source to survey the mature emergence of gender studies in history...This work has become a touchstone for all future studies of women's history. Each volume assembles an international cast of scholars...specialists from many fields, introducing expository and theoretical historical essays about the function of women in history. The work avoids easy polemic and presents demanding, academically elaborate hypotheses about the nature and special procedures necessary to women's history...These essays are written with rigor, methodologically complex engagements, reflecting state of the art of continental historical research and interpretation. This emerging perspective will revolutionize how history will be thought and taught. The contributors...all share a commitment to write history from a gendered perspective that emphasizes relations between the sexes and the evolution of gender systems...This high-quality collection offers strong individual essays that, when read together, add up to more than the sum of their parts. -- Susan Ware "Journal of American History" This book is far more than a chronicle of the many shifts and turns in the fortunes of women in the past eight decades. On the whole, the contents give the reader a close and searching look at the events and social currents behind these shifts, as well as insight into their historical significance. -- Nissim Rejwan "Jerusalem Post Magazine" Provide s a basis for understanding contemporary women and many of the issues--employment, sexuality, violence, political and economic advantage--that affect the health of women... An expansive view of women's history. -- Charles R. King, M.D. "Women and Health" A welcome new installment of the acclaimed series, Volume 5 surveys Western women's history through the 1980s. Again, the focus is not strictly chronological; the work examines the social factors of the 20th century in the context of traditional women's issues. The consequences of Freud and Marx; two world wars; nationalism and fascism; reproductive legislation; the bioethical rights of family members; and the feminist movement have created a century of drastic and not always beneficial change...This volume and the entire set are essential...The contributors and editors deserve accolades. Provide[s] a basis for understanding contemporary women and many of the issues--employment, sexuality, violence, political and economic advantage--that affect the health of women...[An] expansive view of women's history. -- Charles R. King, M.D. "Women and Health" [This book] is far more than a chronicle of the many shifts and turns in the fortunes of women in the past eight decades. On the whole, the contents give the reader a close and searching look at the events and social currents behind these shifts, as well as insight into their historical significance. -- Nissim Rejwan "Jerusalem Post Magazine" This wide-ranging anthropology on the history of women in the twentieth-century West presents material on the state, work, philosophy, war, the arts, demography, the family, and the many feminist issues that drove the women's movement from 1900 to the present...One delights in such unexpected scholarship as that on Quebec and on bioethics; the combination of predictable expert coverage of (for example) French women and of a certain degree of unpredictability further enriches the substance, pace, and virtuosity of Thebaud's undertaking. -- Bonnie G. Smith "Contemporary Sociology"