referencebooks

50 Key Concepts in Gender Studies

By Jane Pilcher and Imelda Whelehan.

Published by Sage, 2004.

This is a small book, measuring 6" by 8.5" and running to just 193 pages, plus an introduction.

This book is a mini-encyclopedia of gender studies, presenting 50 short articles on central topics, each about three or four pages long.

Among the article titles are: Androcentrism, Backlash, Body, Citizenship, Class, Cyborg, Dichotomy, Difference, Domestic Division of Labor, Double Standard, Equality, Essentialism, the Family, Feminisms, Gender, Gendered, Gender Segregation, Heterosexism, Identity Politics, Ideology, Lesbian Continuum, Masculinity/Masculinities, Men's Movements/Men's Studies, (the) Other, Patriarchy, Pornography, Post-feminism, Postmodernism, Post-structuralism, Power, Psychoanalytical Feminism, etc.

The introduction to the book talks about the history of gender studies, originally growing out of second wave feminism, then women's studies, then incorporating men's studies, queer studies and poststructuralism, and ultimately becoming a discipline within academia that in some ways is potentially less challenging to the status quo than it was originally intended to be. With that history stated, the authors go on to make clear that in their treatment of gender studies, "feminist perspectives remain central." The plural form of "perspectives" in that statement is deliberate and accurate, as the essays give a fair presentation of all sides of many controversies within the history of gender studies and feminism. The authors also state that in their discussion of gender studies history, the articles are focused on the U.K. context.

The articles are well written and very informative, though their theoretical scope sometimes seems narrow.

The collection of these articles in such a small, volume makes it an attractive book to own, but its brevity and lack of comprehensiveness make it more of a supplemental work in a library reference collection, where a fuller encyclopedia of feminism or gender studies is really necessary.

International Handbook on Gender Roles

Edited by Leonore Loeb Adler

Published by Greenwood Press, 1993.

This is a 6" X 9" clothbound book of 525 pages, including the bibliography, index and contributors' bios.

The book is divided by country. For each country there is a substantial discussion of gender roles from a feminist anthropological perspective.

As an example, the entry for Nigeria, written by Nigerian scholars, is fifteen pages in length with references. It has an introduction, a three page overview that touches on the history and culture of Nigeria, a long section with the heading "Comparisons between men's and women's gender roles during the life cycle" that is divided by stage of life, and a page-long summary. The section on the comparison of men's and women's gender roles goes into social institutions and contemporary trends in interesting detail.

Not every country is represented, but for every country a country with a similar culture is there (e.g. Finland is the only Scandinavian country represented). There are articles on 31 countries total.

It is interesting to see The United States of America given the same treatment as other countries in the book, which is what really makes it an "international handbook." The section on the United States begins by locating it geographically and telling us that it is bordered by Canada on the North and Mexico on the South, with oceans to the East and West. Much information in the chapter, presented this objectively, is, however, new to Americans who take it for granted, living amidst it.

The arrangement by country allows for research on individual countries, of course, but it also facilitates cross-cultural comparison, which is often what is needed when researching or talking about aspects of culture that people commonly take for granted or view as universal and eternal (which is not to say, of course, that nothing in the world can or should be new).

A nice, substantial book.

The Encyclopedia of Amazons: Women Warriors from Antiquity to the Modern Era

By Jessica Amanda Salmonson

Published by Paragon House, 1991.

This is a 6" X 9" hardbound book of 290 pages including the bibliography.

The book is mainly made up of short paragraph-long descriptions of historical women warriors, soldiers, and armed revolutionaries, from antiquity to the 20th Century (though modern women warriors are somewhat de-emphasized). The book does not have a particular axe to grind other than to be a corrective to 99% of the histories out there, which, in their discussion of the world's wars and revolutions, tend to leave out the women who were involved in them.

Additionally, there are sprinkling of war goddesses included, on the grounds that their myths inspired real life Amazons, and also because their status as goddesses is likely to have been born out of the legendary deeds of real life women warriors of the very distant past.

The author apologizes that although her book is the largest compilation of women warriors to date, her list is somewhat random and incomplete.

She also notes that there are many types of heroic women in history that she did not include, because they don't meet her criteria of Amazonhood. Some of these are assassins, undercover spies, modern frontline technicians, criminals and murderesses, women forced into a single heroic act, etc. The book is stronger for being so focused.

Here is a typical entry:

Ho Te Que: "Spectacular in her combat gear and with a .45 revolver at her hip," this mother of seven was known as Tiger Lady. She led Vietnamese soldiers against the Viet Cong. In the jungles, rumors spread that she was a devil and not human at all. She was killed in action in 1965. Three thousand women served officially as combatants in the South Vietnam Women's Army in 1966.

The Nonsexist Word Finder: A Dictionary of Gender-Free Usage

By Rosalee Maggio

Published by Oryx Press, 1987

This is a 5" X 8" paperback of 210 pages including the index with brief preferatory materials. The author didn't feel that any long introductory essay was needed justifying the book or explaining its purpose, but each letter-of-the-alphabet section of the dictionary begins with a quotation that makes the point (e.g. "In many patriarchies, language, as well as cultural tradition, reserves the human condition for the male . . . general application favors the male far more often than the female as referent, or even sole referent." - Kate Millett.) Also, there are essays in the 42-pages section of appendices that get into some of the issues surrounding sexist and non-sexist writing and language.

The primary purpose of the book is to provide practical alternatives to sexist words referring to people. The two major types of these, that I notice, are words for occupations that have the word "man" in them (e.g. instead of "newsman/newspaperman" we should use "reporter," "newspaper reporter," "journalist," etc.) and words that have a generic form and an obsolete feminine form, where the generic form should be used for everybody (e.g. female actors should be called "actors" and not "actresses.") Common phrases are also included with recommended alternatives.

A secondary purpose is to provide information about words that are not themselves sexist, sometimes also advising about nonsexist use of those words. For example, the dictionary has entries for "doctor" and "nurse" to point out that these are gender neutral terms and shouldn't be taken to imply the use of gendered pronouns.

Here is a typically interesting entry:

midwife (noun) birth attendant. "Midwife" does not refer to the sex of the midwife but to that of the person being assisted: "mid" means "with" and "wife" means "woman," therefore, a midwife is someone who is with a woman. Because of the term's feminine appearance, some people prefer the more neutral-looking "birth attendant." But "midwife" enjoys strong feminist endorsement and since it is not sexist, it can and should be retained in many contexts.

This is an very interesting reference book. For feminists it might not provide much news, but it is potentially very useful for supporting or documenting non-sexist word choices as an editor or when working with editors. A decent library shouldn't be without it.