Showing papers in "Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society in 1990"
TL;DR: Diversity is found in the practice of computing that is denied by its social construction: highly successful programmers use concrete and personal approaches to knowledge that are far from the cultural stereotypes of formal mathematics.
Abstract: The prevailing image of the computer represents it as a logical machine and computer programming as a technical, mathematical activity. Both the popular and technical culture have constructed computation as the ultimate embodiment of the abstract and formal. Yet the computer's intellectual personality has another side: our research finds diversity in the practice of computing that is denied by its social construction. When we looked closely at programmers in action we saw formal and abstract approaches; but we also saw highly successful programmers in relationships with their material that are more reminiscent of a painter than a logician. They use concrete and personal approaches to knowledge that are far from the cultural stereotypes of formal mathematics.1
559 citations
TL;DR: Physicians who handle the cases of intersexed infants consider several factors beside biological ones in determining, assigning, and announcing the gender of a particular infant.
Abstract: The birth of intersexed infants, babies born with genitals that are neither clearly male nor
clearly female, has been documented throughout recorded time. In the late twentieth century, medical technology has advanced to allow scientists to determine chromosomal and
hormonal gender, which is typically taken to be the real, natural, biological gender, usually
referred to as “sex.”1 Nevertheless, physicians who handle the cases of intersexed infants
consider several factors beside biological ones in determining, assigning, and announcing
the gender of a particular infant. Indeed, biological factors are often preempted in their
deliberations by such cultural factors as the “correct” length of the penis and capacity of the
vagina.
348 citations
TL;DR: Singer prefaces his groundbreaking treatise Animal Liberation (1975) with an anecdote about a visit he and his wife made to the home of a woman who claimed to love animals, had heard he was writing a book on the subject, and so invited him to tea as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Peter Singer prefaces his groundbreaking treatise Animal Liberation (1975) with an anecdote about a visit he and his wife made to the home of a woman who claimed to love animals, had heard he was writing a book on the subject, and so invited him to tea. Singer's attitude toward the woman is contemptuous: she had invited a friend who also loved animals and was "keen to meet us. When we arrived our hostess's friend was already there, and ... certainly was keen to talk about animals. 'I do love animals,' she began... and she was off. She paused while refreshments were served, took a ham sandwich, and then asked us what pets we had."' Singer's point is not only to condemn the woman's hypocrisy in claiming to love animals while she was eating meat but also to dissociate himself from a sentimentalist approach to animal welfare.
205 citations
TL;DR: This article argued that women are, at best, second-class citizens in most Western democracies and that women lack the full complement of rights included in citizenship, but also the conceptualization of citizenship in these systems-the characteristics, qualities, attributes, behavior, and identity of those who are regarded as full members of the political community-is derived from a set of values, experiences, modes of discourse, rituals, and practices that both explicitly and implicitly privileges men and the "masculine" and excludes women and the ''female''.
Abstract: Some feminists have argued that women are, at best, second-class citizens in most Western democracies. Not only do women lack the full complement of \"rights\" included in citizenship, but also the conceptualization of citizenship in these systems-the characteristics, qualities, attributes, behavior, and identity of those who are regarded as full members of the political community-is derived from a set of values, experiences, modes of discourse, rituals, and practices that both explicitly and implicitly privileges men and the \"masculine\" and excludes women and the \"female.\" As feminists, we have contended that in Western political discourse, citizenship remains defined as an activity practiced in an androcentric field of action and represented through the codes of a phallocentric discourse.'
195 citations
TL;DR: This article reviewed the history of research on gender differences, focusing particularly on the issue of gender differences in cognitive abilities, and then move to a discussion of recent meta-analyses of psychological gender differences.
Abstract: Psychological research on gender differences has had a long, and sometimes dishonorable, history spanning more than a century.' The research ranges from early efforts to measure the cranial capacities of males and females to the current sophisticated metaanalyses of psychological gender differences. Here I will briefly review the history of research on gender differences, focusing particularly on the issue of gender differences in cognitive abilities, and then move to a discussion of recent meta-analyses of psychological gender differences.
164 citations
TL;DR: By 1957, 15 percent of the African women living in the colonial city of Usumbura, Ruanda-Urundi (present-day Bujumbura in Burundi), were participating in a government-sponsored educational and social welfare program.
Abstract: By 1957, 15 percent of the African women living in the colonial city of Usumbura, Ruanda-Urundi (present-day Bujumbura, Burundi), were participating in a government-sponsored educational and social welfare program.' Foyers sociaux, or social homes, were Belgian domestic training institutions for African women, founded for married women living in colonial urban centers. Some women were learning to cook, mend, iron, and wash clothes, and how to wean their infants and decorate their homes, and a select few were being trained to work (for pay) as auxiliary aids or monitors in the classroom. European women circulated in the African quarters, visiting and inspecting the students' homes and helping women prepare for annual most-beautiful-house contests. Graduation ceremonies, holiday celebrations, and displays of students' projects were other annual events sponsored by a foyer social that marked
110 citations
TL;DR: The literature on infertility characteristically refers to the rising incidence of this dysfunction, but there is no hard evidence that the percentage of marital pairs in the United States unable to have the children they desire has, over the past century, been lower than 10 percent or higher than 20 percent.
Abstract: Travel for this study was supported by a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Foundation Fund award. 1Infertility: Medical and Social Choices, U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, OTA-BA-358 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, May 1988), 49-57. Until 1982, data on the prevalence of infertility were not reliable, and today there is still no conceptual or methodologic consensus concerning how to determine its prevalence. The literature on infertility characteristically refers to the rising incidence of this dysfunction, but there is no hard evidence that the percentage of marital pairs in the United States unable to have the children they desire has, over the past century, been lower than 10 percent or higher than 20 percent. Within any one time period, estimates vary over this range. Although changes in the incidence of infertility in subgroups, such as black women, and in the incidence of certain diseases or conditions associated with infertility, such as venereal diseases and dietary deficiencies, have occurred, the overall prevalence appears to be rather stable. See W. R. Keye, "Psychosexual Responses to Infertility," Clinics in Obstetrics and Gynecology 27 (September 1984): 760-66, esp. 760; P. Cutright and E. Shorter, "The Effects of Health on the Completed Fertility of Nonwhite and White U.S. Women Born between 1867 and 1935," Journal of Social History 13 (Winter 1979): 191-217; E. Shorter, A History of Women's Bodies (New York: Basic, 1982), esp. 266-67, and "Women's Diseases before 1900," in New
98 citations
TL;DR: The public face of the women's movement is not the same as it was in the 1990s as discussed by the authors, and the public face has changed over the last decade, while the consciousness raising functions of street politics and pressure group activity have been succeeded by a process of unobtrusive mobilization inside institutions.
Abstract: As the 1990s begin, few feminists subscribe to the popular wisdom that the women's movement is dead. Yet we also know that the public face of the feminist movement is not the same. Marches, protests, and demonstrations are now infrequent, press coverage is decreased, much of the drama is gone. Yet consciousness of continued gender inequalities has not abated. Abortion rights, sexual harassment, date rape, battering, pay inequities, women's double shift, the feminization of poverty, child care, and the burden that falls on women who care for aging parents are all issues that continue to generate public debate and private conversation. The form of feminist activism that fuels these debates and conversations has changed, however. Over the last decade the consciousness-raising functions of street politics and pressure group activity have been succeeded by a process of what might be termed unobtrusive mobilization inside institutions. Occurring inside institutions of higher education, foundations, the social services, the media, the professions, the armed forces, the
96 citations
TL;DR: In contemporary America, computer work-programming, computer engineering, systems analysis-is more than a job; it is a major cultural practice, a large-scale social form that has created and reinforced modes of thinking, systems of interaction, and ideologies of social control.
Abstract: In contemporary America, computer work-programming, computer engineering, systems analysis-is more than a job. It is a major cultural practice, a large-scale social form that has created and reinforced modes of thinking, systems of interaction, and ideologies of social control. In the 1970s, American women entered the higher levels of computer work in ever-increasing numbers. By 1984, 35 percent of U.S. computer programmers and 30 percent of American systems analysts were women.' Across the board, in
86 citations
TL;DR: Among secondary-school-aged children (eleven to eighteen years), boys are at least three times more likely than girls to use a computer at home, participate in computer-related clubs or activities at school, or attend a computer camp.
Abstract: Among secondary-school-aged children (eleven to eighteen years), boys are at least three times more likely than girls to use a computer at home, participate in computer-related clubs or activities at school, or attend a computer camp.' This 3:1 pattern continues through the postsecondary years. In 1985, though approximately fourteen thousand out of twenty-six thousand bachelor's degrees in computer science were awarded to women, women earned only two thousand out of seven thousand master's degrees.2 Approxi-
86 citations
TL;DR: The relation of gender to technology, the effects of technology on women's and men's lives, the ways in which women and men construct and use technology, theoretical implications of gender socialization for future needs and developments in technology, these connections have yet to be made as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Sometimes technological change seems the only constant in our lives; in our darker moments, the Frankenstein specter of technology, embodied by the atomic bomb, haunts our collective dreams. The rapidity of technological innovation, and our urgent need to describe and adapt to its effects, may overwhelm the examination of more fundamental questions concerning its nature and its relation to human need. Popular consciousness as well as formal scholarship too often share an overriding concern with the effects of technological change while neglecting to look for the forces driving these changes. The exceptions, welcome and provocative, have been all too rare.' The relation of gender to technology-the effects of technology on women's and men's lives, the ways in which women and men construct and use technology, the theoretical implications of gender socialization for future needs and developments in technology-these connections have yet to be made, this story has yet to be written. Yet it is imperative that as feminists we try to sort out these forces and habits of thought if we want best to influence the directions and uses of rapidly changing technologies.
TL;DR: The evidence given by Kenneth Clark, one of the world's leading art historians, to Lord Longford's committee on pornography in Britain, in 1972 is just one fragment of a vast body of discourses that has been produced on the subject of pornography over the last few decades as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The evidence given by Kenneth Clark, one of the world's leading art historians, to Lord Longford's committee on pornography in Britain, in 1972 is just one fragment of a vast body of discourses that has been produced on the subject of pornography over the last few decades.' The Longford committee was a privately sponsored investigation that claimed to represent public opinion. Its report, published in the form of a mass-market paperback and launched in a blaze of publicity, fueled the pornography debate in Britain in the 1970s. From the seventies onward, feminists, moral crusaders, governments, and various other pressure groups have presented their views on the issue, with the result that pornography has become one of the most fiercely and publicly contested areas within contemporary cultural production.2
TL;DR: The omission of black women from most published histories of working women has been attributed by some historians to the paucity of sources on black working women and by others to the uniqueness of the work experience as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: scholarly advice of Jacquelyn Dowd Hall and James O. Horton, who commented on a version of this paper at the 1987 meeting of the Organization of American Historians (OAH), and from critical readings by Eileen Boris, my copresenter at the OAH, by my colleague William Sabol, and by the anonymous readers for Signs. 1 Few groups of women have had a longer history of both paid and unpaid work in the United States than black women; yet traditionally, black women have been absent from most published histories of working women, and where they have appeared, they often have been the victims of sweeping generalizations and unfounded stereotypes. The omission has been attributed by some historians to the paucity of sources on black working women and by others to the \"uniqueness\" of the work experience of black women, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to offer more than a superficial treatment of black women in histories of (white) women workers. Two recent historical publications that make significant contributions to our understanding of black working women are Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (New York: Basic, 1985); and Dolores Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied: Race, Gender
TL;DR: The most important studies of incest to date reveal the extent to which the mother becomes the focus for feelings of anger, hatred, and betrayal on the part of daughters who were abused by their mothers as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Over the last decade there has been a growing body of literature on the causes, effects, and therapeutic approaches to dealing with the problem of family violence as it is manifested in increasingly high numbers of reported cases of incest.' Within this field of research, feminist analysis has treated sexual abuse within the family as a source of female victimization that results from patriarchal family arrangements that create and foster female dependence and powerlessness through male control over women and children. While this analysis provides a compelling social and political explanation for female victimization in the family, it focuses primarily on the power of the father and thus fails to address the nature of motherdaughter relationships within incest families and the conflicts that characterize maternal bonding under conditions of sexual abuse. The most important studies of incest to date reveal the extent to which the mother becomes the focus for feelings of anger, hatred, and betrayal on the part of daughters who were abused by their
TL;DR: In the familiar version collated and edited by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, a young girl flees from the murderous intentions of her wicked stepmother, finds shelter with the seven dwarfs, undergoes three trials or temptations, succumbs to the poison apple, and is rescued from her death-sleep by a charming prince.
Abstract: It is no news, yet still interesting to consider, that myths and fairy tales are complex reflectors of the conscious and unconscious concerns of their readers. A case in point is the story of Snow White. In the familiar version collated and edited by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, a young girl flees from the murderous intentions of her wicked stepmother, finds shelter with the seven dwarfs, undergoes three trials or temptations, succumbs to the poison apple, and is rescued from her death-sleep by a charming prince. Two close readings of this version, one psychoanalytic and the other feminist, suggest that because "Snow White" is part of a literary as well as a folkloric tradition, it may be studied as a cultural artifact and text valid in itself.' As part of a people's oral tradition, a folktale is a continually recreated narrative. Even when written and codified, the tale still
TL;DR: The notion of "emotion management" refers to this conscious effort of bringing feelings into line with what is deemed appropriate in a given situation as mentioned in this paper, which can be seen as a form of emotional labor.
Abstract: In her early writing on the sociology of emotions, Arlie Russell Hochschild introduced the concept of the "sentient actor" as a reminder that humans are neither simply "bloodless calculators" nor "blind expressers of uncontrolled emotions" but that in everyday life humans constantly bridge the gap between pure reason and pure emotion: "Human beings, as sentient actors, are aware of their experiences and consciously respond to their feelings and the cultural expectations concerning them."1 Hochschild's notion of "emotion management" refers to this conscious effort of bringing feelings into line with what is deemed appropriate in a given situation. Thus, for example, enacting the social roles of friend, lover, or bride requires knowing the appropriate "feeling rule" (what others expect one to feel) and making efforts to bring emotions into line with it. This private act of emotion management is "transmuted" into emotional labor when it is put to commercial
TL;DR: The Ur-plot is a variant of Richardsonian courtship narrative in which an unprotected young female in an isolated setting uncovers a sinister secret as mentioned in this paper, and after repeated trials and persecutions, one of two possible outcomes usually follows.
Abstract: Traditional accounts of Gothic plots are familiar enough. The Ur-plot is a terror-inflected variant of Richardsonian courtship narrative in which an unprotected young female in an isolated setting uncovers a sinister secret.' After repeated trials and persecutions, one of two possible outcomes usually follows. The master of the house is discovered as the evil source of her tribulations and is vanquished by the poor-but-honest (and inevitably later revealed as noble) young male, who marries the female; or the master of the house, apparently the source of evil, is revealed to be more sinned against than sinning. He marries the female. Strangely enough, in both scenarios the narrative is shaped by the mystery the male presents and not by the drama of the supposed protagonist, the Gothic heroine. In traditional psychological readings, we nonetheless focus on the repressed desire of the heroine as the key that opens the text and
TL;DR: The women were active participants in the war, foreshadowing a general change in relations between Algerian women and men as mentioned in this paper, yet during the war and after independence the Algerian nationalist leaders did not place the promotion of women's needs on its political agenda.
Abstract: A settlement colony of France since 1830, Algeria underwent a fierce war between nationalist forces and French troops, which began on November 1, 1954, and ended with the overthrow of French rule and the establishment of a socialist independent government on July 3, 1962. Most conspicuously, women were active participants in the war, foreshadowing a general change in relations between Algerian women and men. Yet, throughout the war and after independence the Algerian nationalist leaders did not place the promotion of women's needs on its political agenda. For example, the Front for National Liberation (FLN), which led the anticolonial struggle, described the conditions under which women lived as in need of improvement but took few systematic and concrete measures to remedy them. Instead, it mentioned that this situation would have to be addressed after the completion of the anticolonial struggle.' Similarly, after the war, Algeria instituted an economic development program that failed to incorporate women's needs.2 Finally, in 1984, legislators passed a controversial
TL;DR: The range of recent writing on Alcott is impressive, and the following is by no means an exhaustive bibliography: as discussed by the authors, "Little Women," in Communities of Women: An Idea in Fiction, ed. Nina Auerbach (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1978), 55-75; "A Necessary Mask: The Sensation Fiction of Louisa May Alcott," Publications of the Missouri Philological Association, Warrensbury, Mo., no. 5 (1980), 8-14; Madelon Bedell, "Beneath the
Abstract: 1 The range of recent writing on Alcott is impressive, and the following is by no means an exhaustive bibliography: Nina Auerbach, "Little Women," in Communities of Women: An Idea in Fiction, ed. Nina Auerbach (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 55-75; Jeanne Bedell, "A Necessary Mask: The Sensation Fiction of Louisa May Alcott," Publications of the Missouri Philological Association, Warrensbury, Mo., no. 5 (1980), 8-14; Madelon Bedell, "Beneath the Surface: Power and Passion in Little Women," in Critical Essays on Louisa May Alcott, ed. Madeleine Ster (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1984), 145-50; Brigid Brophy, "Sentimentality and Louisa May Alcott," in Stem, ed., Critical Essays, 93-96; Mary Cadogan, " 'Sweet, If Somewhat Tomboyish': The British Response to Louisa May Alcott," in Stem, ed., Critical Essays, 275-79; Ann Douglas, "Mysteries of Louisa May Alcott," New York Review of Books 25 (September 28, 1978): 60-63; Sarah Elbert, A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott and Little Women (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984); Judith Fetterley, "Impersonating Little Women: The Radicalism of Alcott's Behind a Mask," Women's Studies 10, no. 1 (1983): 1-14, and "Little Women: Alcott's Civil War," in Stem, ed., Critical Essays, 140-43; Carol Gay, "The Philosopher and His Daughter: Amos Bronson Alcott and Louisa," Essays in Literature 2, no. 2 (Fall 1975): 181-91; Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979); Alfred Habegger, "Precious Incest: First Novels by Louisa May Alcott and Henry James," Massachusetts Review 26, nos. 2-3 (Summer-Autumn 1985): 232-62; Karen Halttunen, "The Domestic Drama of Louisa May Alcott," Feminist Studies 10, no. 2 (Summer 1984):
TL;DR: The women of the 1880s represented a moment of transition in the history of women's communities: they attempted to live outside of the sphere of family but chose not to enter into those alternative domestic structures created by like-minded women as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Remarkable for the revival of British socialism, the birth of New Unionism, and the creation of empirical sociology, the decade of the 1880s also produced a generation of women that imagined and, for a time, lived out the possibility of social and economic independence. Born in the late 1850s and early 1860s, these middleclass women represented a moment of transition in the history of women's communities: they attempted to live outside of the sphere of family but chose not to enter into those alternative domestic structures created by like-minded women.' Although they did not form residential communities in the way that some teachers, nurses, and settlement house workers did, they nevertheless depended on a loosely organized community, or network, of other unmarried women in whom they saw their own ambitions reflected and affirmed. United by no single vocation or ideology, these women were connected by their revolt against the constraints of
TL;DR: The ease with which a woman could be divorced illustrates her low status during the Tokugawa period [1600-1868] and in early Meiji [1868-1912] as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The ease with which a woman could be divorced illustrates her low status During the Tokugawa period [1600-1868] and in early Meiji [1868-1912] it was merely necessary for a husband to state his intention to divorce in a letter, whose brevity was indicated by the usual term for this missive: mikudarihan ("three-and-a-half lines") The wife, on the other hand, had no legal recourse in case of maltreatment, and in desperation could only run away to a convent at Kamakura where men were not admitted or, more picturesquely, she could resort to the magical powers of a "divorce nettle tree" at Itabashi [JoY HENDRY, Marriage in Changing Japan]
TL;DR: In Nigeria women activists and scholars have begun to collect data on the situation women in their country face and to articulate goals for women in the national development process as mentioned in this paper, but the basic unit of data collection should remain the individual woman at the grass-root level.
Abstract: Numerous reports have stressed the need to involve women in rural development in the Third World yet this task required baseline data on the basic parameters of rural womens lives and roles that are not available. Among the pertinent research areas are: constraints imposed by cultural norms marriage and motherhood behaviors religious beliefs kinship organization and forms of residence degree of decision-making power of women within the family and the broader community the impact of patriarchy the relative access of males and females to valued resources and the impact of the international world economic situation on womens work. In Nigeria women activists and scholars have begun to collect data on the situation women in their country face and to articulate goals for women in the national development process. Particularly useful have been 3 surveys: the Family Fertility and Family Planning Survey 1971-73; the Lagos Parity Study of 1976; and the Nigeria Fertility Survey 1981-82. These surveys provide a range of information on Nigerian womens maternal conjugal and worker roles but coverage of Womens kinship ritual/religious individual and community roles is less complete. Although planning for women in development requires aggregate data across ethnic groups religions and various socioeconomic groupings the basic unit of data collection should remain the individual woman at the grass-roots level. At all times the contribution of women to development processes must be considered within the context of currently existing social and economic conditions. In addition to providing baselines for monitoring the extent of future change family and household surveys can provide valuable information about current access to education medical care and family planning programs.
TL;DR: The American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities (travel to collections Grant FE-2-590-96 and Fellowship for College Teachers FB-24577-87), and Pace University generously supported research for this article as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities (travel to collections Grant FE-2-590-96 and Fellowship for College Teachers FB-24577-87), and Pace University generously supported research for this article. I would like to thank Martha Howell and Judith Walkowitz for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay. 1 Carroll Smith-Rosenberg's pathbreaking article, \"The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America,\" Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1, no. 1 (Autumn 1975): 1-30, stimulated a rich literature on mothers and daughters and the way female bonding affected women's activity and achievements as they moved into the world outside the home; see, e.g., Leonore Davidoff, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), esp. chap. 9; Mary Ryan, \"The Empire of the Mother: American Writing about Domesticity, 1830-1860,\" Women and History, nos. 2/3 (Summer/Fall 1982), and Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and Martha Vicinus, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
TL;DR: It is amazing how my mother can make me suffer.... She has it all planned. She's doing it to "let me go." Well, after all she didn't have electricity before; I've given her six "wonderfully easy years." How she hates it, that I'm her "sole source of support." Implicit in every syllable and tone, the fact that I've failed, fallen down on the job, been the broken reed as mentioned in this paper. But never mind (brightly) she's able to manage nicely, thank you!
Abstract: It is amazing how my mother can make me suffer. Yesterday ... she was here. ... She has it all planned. Cut off the electric bill and she can manage indefinitely. She's doing it to "let me go." Well, after all she didn't have electricity before; I've given her six "wonderfully easy years." How she hates it, that I'm her "sole source of support." Implicit in every syllable and tone, the fact that I've failed, fallen down on the job, been the broken reed. But never mind (brightly) she's able to manage nicely, thank you! .. . Perhaps an hour of simply hellish misery.'
TL;DR: This paper argued that the optimism is based upon an inaccurate and incomplete analysis of the data that has not taken into account the differential impact of women's participation in the labor market and the historical experiences of African-Americans created different patterns of female labor-force participation from those that developed among European-Americans.
Abstract: Recent social science scholarship has given rise to a popular myth that asserts African-Americans have made a great deal of progress toward achieving economic equality in American society and that this progress may be expected to continue into the indefinite future. We assert that this myth is both dangerous and false. It is dangerous because the myth has supported the rationale for public policies that deemphasize government action to overcome racial inequality. It is false because the optimism is based upon an inaccurate and incomplete analysis of the data that has not taken into account the differential impact of women's participation in the labor market. The historical experiences of African-Americans created different patterns of female labor-force participation from those that developed among European-Americans.' Consequently, African-American women have
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