Social psychologist Tavris (Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, 1983) unveils society's systemic and often unconscious definition of the male as the norm against which women must measure up or be found deficient—a provocative and thought-provoking look at how sexism persists today. That women have lower self-esteem than men, are less self- confident, are more likely to repress their anger, and are more open to their feelings: these are societal truisms analyzed in every women's magazine in the country, Tavris says, as she points out that the question of how women compare to men has long held scientific researchers, doctors, psychologists and, today, cultural feminists in thrall. What is nearly always missed in such comparisons, the author adds, is that women are being compared, positively or negatively, to a male ``norm''—thus advancing an erroneous assumption of ``opposites'' and, in negative comparisons, pathologizing normal female ways of being. Illustrating her premise by pointing out the unlikelihood of finding a bookstore filled with manuals aimed at helping men overcome their tendency to be more conceited than women, to assess their abilities less realistically than women, or to have more difficulty than women in maintaining attachments, Tavris analyzes how the treatment of normal female processes as abnormal (physical reactions to menstruation become a ``syndrome'' that debilitates; women floundering under society- caused difficulties combining child care and work are diagnosed as ``depressed''; workers' time off for pregnancies is shoved into the category of ``disability leave''; cultural feminists' belief in women's ``natural'' superiority allows men to proceed, unquestioned, with their own ``natural'' careerist lives) cripple efforts toward true equality and mutual enhancement between the sexes. Greater awareness of the diversity of ``normal'' human behaviors is needed, Tavris says, if we are to view one another with unblinkered eyes. The author's unusual ability to winnow out such deeply imbedded errors in thinking makes this an especially important, stimulating, and timely work, and an excellent complement to Susan Faludi's Backlash (1991).
Pub Date: March 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-66274-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1992
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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