Bringing into historical perspective the critical conflict between woman's right to equality of opportunity and the demands of the family, Degler shows how the modern family has been shaped by women's search for greater autonomy

A provocative study based on imaginative historical research and very fine close readings. The book provides a useful American complement to Helena Michie's The Flesh Made Word and Margaret Homans's Bearing the World. It should prove enlightening and otherwise useful not just to scholars of American literature, but also to those engaged in American studies, feminist criticism and theory, women's studies, the sociology of medicine and illness, and the history of science and medicine. Cynthia S. Jordan, Indiana University

Childbirth is a quintessential family event that simultaneously holds great promise and runs the risk of danger. By the late nineteenth century, the birthing room had become a place where the goals of the new scientific professional could be demonstrated, but where traditional female knowledge was in conflict with the new ways. Here the choice of attendants and their practices defined gender, ethnicity, class, and the role of the professional. Using the methodology of social science theory, particularly quantitative statistical analysis and historical demography, Charlotte Borst examines the effect of gender, culture, and class on the transition to physician-attended childbirth. Earlier studies have focused on physician opposition to midwifery, devoting little attention to the training for and actual practice of midwifery. As a result, until now we knew little about the actual conditions of the midwife's education and practice. Catching Babies is the first study to examine the move to physician-attended birth within the context of a particular community. It focuses on four representative counties in Wisconsin to study both midwives and physicians within the context of their community. Borst finds that midwives were not pushed out of practice by elitist or misogynist obstetricians. Instead, their traditional, artisanal skills ceased to be valued by a society that had come to embrace the model of disinterested, professional science. The community that had previously hired midwives turned to physicians who shared ethnic and cultural values with the very midwives they replaced.

From reviews of the first edition:"The book has a clear and readable style, moving easily between vignettes of marketwomen's lives, descriptions of the markets themselves, and surveys of the theoretical literature. Babb's long, close involvement with the Huaraz markets is apparent. As someone who has spent a lot of time in Andean markets, I found the book pleasurable to read, because it recreated the experience of the marketplace so well."--American Ethnologist"Between Field and Cooking Pot offers details of the daily lives of marketwomen in the central Andean departmental capital of Huaraz. . . . A welcome addition to studies of women and international development, this book contains a wealth of firsthand material, collected through informal participant-observation as well as formal interviews and analysis of statistical data. . . . The book encourages us to imagine how the dynamic culture of marketwomen might intersect with the construction, representation, and effects of class and gender."--American Anthropologist"The book has a clear and readable style, moving easily between vignettes of marketwomen's lives, descriptions of the markets themselves, and surveys of the theoretical literature. Babb's long, close involvement with the Huaraz markets is apparent. As someone who has spent a lot of time in Andean markets, I found the book pleasurable to read, because it recreated the experience of the marketplace so well."--American EthnologistThis revised edition of Between Field and Cooking Pot offers an updated appraisal of what neoliberal politics and economics mean in the lives of marketwomen in the nineties, based on new fieldwork conducted in 1997. Babb also reflects on how recent currents in feminist and anthropological studies have caused her to rethink some aspects of Andean marketers in Peruvian culture and society.

"[Examines] the intersection between class, gender, and ethnicity among direct production workers in Albuquerque. ... [P]rovides an alternative perspective that stresses differences of experience among women belonging to distinct ethnic groups and socio-economic strata."--Page 4 of cover.

Traces the life of Abigail Scott Duniway, describes her career as a journalist, and discusses her contributions to the fight for women's rights

"The Women's Cause is One"--a slogan from a 1919 lobbying pamphlet in support of women's trade unionism--sums up the crusading spirit of this exciting period in women's history. This book shows how the women's movement, through its network of organization and its powerful and widespread campaigning, was transformed and developed into a formidable fighting force. It continued its assault on entrenched positions to secure women's full and equal participation in society--in politics, commerce, industry and the professions, education, welfare, politics and for franchise extension. This study confounds the myth of the movement's post-war decline.

Drawing on a twenty-two-year study of thirty women from college graduation to mid-life, the author traces how women construct their identities over a lifetime and reveals the complexities of their characters that are misunderstood by the media. UP.

This new edition of a widely-acclaimed anthology integrates the best of the extensive new scholarship in women's history with American history as a whole. Some sixty documents and articles--ranging from accounts of seventeenth-century obstetrical practices to an analysis of contemporary feminism--are framed by a conceptually sophisticated yet accessible introduction that demonstrates how biology, economics, politics, and ideology interact in the rich, distinctive history of American women. The innovative second edition demonstrates with new force and vigor why gender has become a powerful analytical device for those seeking to understand the past and present. Features: *Provides a comprehensive sampling of the best and most readable essays by renowned scholars of American women's history. * Integrates original historical documents with articles by contemporary scholars on a wide range of topics * Lists essential documents which relate past legal decisions to contemporary issues such as the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion, military draft for women, and economic equity and comparable worth New to the second edition: * Nine new essays, four documents, and one legal case, included in light of consultation with more than two-dozen scholars and teachers who have used Women's America in their classrooms * Updated and revised concluding essay by Jane De Hart-Mathews, presenting statistical data that constitute a startling reminder of major inequities that persist amidst the gains of recent decades * Revised headnotes within the text and for nearly half of the "Essential Documents" * Updated bibliography, containing more than one-third new entries, plus a listing of useful films

In the rural areas of south-central Mexico, there are believed to be witches who transform themselves into animals in order to suck the blood from the necks of sleeping infants. This book analyzes beliefs held by the great majority of the population of rural Tlaxcala a generation ago and chronicles its drastic transformation since then. "The most comprehensive statement on this centrally important ethnographic phenomenon in the last forty years. It bears ready comparison with the two great classics, Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft Among the Azande and Clyde Kluckhohn's Navaho Witchcraft."ÑHenry H. Selby

Alphabetized volume on women writers, major titles, movements, genres from medieval times to the present.

In the controversy over female sexuality and behavior she played an especially significant role, because she embodied the potential for either virtuous attention to duty - as wife/mother or spinster/sister - or depraved independence and sexual freedom. Unlike other examinations of Victorian girlhood, this collection is particularly distinguished by its combination of literary and cultural history in its discussion of both British and American texts and practices. Among the topics addressed are the nineteenth-century attempt to link morality and diet; the making of heroines in biographies for girls; Lewis Carroll's and John Millais's iconographies of girlhood in, respectively, their photographs and paintings; genre fiction for and by girls; and the effort to reincorporate teenage unwed mothers into the domestic life of Victorian America

Covers the employment of women, including individuals, laws, court cases, specific occupations, and other subjects