Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings

by Susan Shaw, Janet Lee, Susan M. Shaw

Book Overview

Women's Voices is an introductory women's studies reader crafted to include a balance of recent contemporary readings with historical and classic pieces. This student-friendly text provides short,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 007351232X
• ISBN13: 9780073512327
• Release Date: July 2011
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Langua
• Length: 677 Pages
• Weight: 2.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.4" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Damn!

They really went all out to make sure the book did not get damaged during the shipping process. They shrink wrapped the book and placed it in a box with foam peanuts.

An Excellent Hybrid Text

Women's Voices, Feminist Visions is certainly not a perfect book, but given the immense demands of its subject matter it does the job with aplomb nevertheless. My work brings me into contact with a lot of social science textbooks and yet this is the one that ends up sitting on my desk atop my magazines since I read it so frequently. For students new to women and gender studies it's an excellent primer with mostly short, easily digestable readings. What sets this book apart is that it's half straight-textbook, half-anthology. In most women's studies courses anthologies are the law of the land simply because encapsulating women's (and men's) diverse experiences with gender in society is a challenge at the best of times and it's simply more sensible and effective to allow a diverse array of thinkers and writers representing the various feminisms and the diversity of gender academia and activism to speak, as it were. Nevertheless, Susan Shaw and Janet Lee try their best with lengthy introductions to each chapter which corrals a related set of readings. Their intros try to cover the basics of gender in society: what are institutions? What does religion have to do with gender? What is patriarchy? What does social construction mean? Etc. etc. These questions are ably answered with deft summary in a convincing narrative. The cartoons interspersed throughout are sometimes funny and sometimes a bit cheesy, but to each their own and I suppose they should be applauded for trying. This book, out of all the gender studies texts I own, is perhaps the most activist oriented of them. It is not the only textbook with the f-word emblazoned on its cover but it does take it the most seriously out of all of them. It hits the ground running in Chapter 1 with a robust defence of feminism as an idea, taking on the various myths about feminism and women's studies, which should be helpful to 101 level students and a welcome aid to the professor in that regard. Throughout the text are lots of helpful boxes which highlight women's rights activists from the last 150 years: I appreciate the effort to shine the spotlight on as many women of colour as possible as well. While the book is a strident advocate for feminism in theory, it is self critical of feminism's often difficult relationship with working class women, women of colour- inclusive of Native women and Asian women as well- and a lot of critical analysis of feminism occurs in the text, both in Shaw and Lee's narrative and in the readings themselves, a good chunk of which are from a diverse population of feminists and scholars. 'Big names' are there, but represent a small minority of readings, thankfully. Having read all of them I can safely say that what was selected deserves to be put before as many students as possible. On the issue of inclusiveness, Shaw and Lee's intros and statistics do often mention men in society and how various gender issues can affect them as well. It's fair without drawing false symmetrie

better than expected

I received my order 2 business days after I ordered it and in much better condition than the seller described.

Excellent textbook for Intro to Women's Studies

I love this anthology for many reasons and find it ideal for an Intro level WS class. Each chapter begins with an introduction that summarizes the readings and puts them in a context. I expect the intros to be a little overwhelming for my students, but then we take time in class to discuss the key points and break them down to a more manageable level. Each chapter includes at least one essay with a global feminist perspective, which is one of the reasons I like this book. There is a good mix of essays representing minorities and essays that my students (who are predominately white, heterosexual Americans) "can relate to." Some of the essays are dry but very informative; when planning a class it might be best to present those in a powerpoint or lecture rather than have the students read them. This book contains many of the pivotal authors in the feminist movement, and hits all the major women's studies concepts. The only difficulty is figuring out what to excise from my syllabus, since there are *so* many readings I want to include and not enough class time to discuss them. The negative reviews on this page seem to reflect the opinions of passive learners or students who need a lot of support to make sense of what they're reading. This book does *not* indicate that women who want to be housewives should receive our disdain, as one reviewer below indicates. It is instead very inclusive and allows for many perspectives to converse within its pages. The book Listen Up is a good complement to this anthology, since its essays are informal and personal.

Great Introduction

This book is a great introduction for those who want to learn more about what feminism is all about. The book contains the history of the women's movement and articles from a variety of authors concerning the lives of women from different social and cultural backgrounds. The issue of race and sexuality are important topics in the book because depending on their background women have very different experiences with sexism. It delves deeply into the reality of oppression and how it effects everybody and not just a certain group of people. It's a great read if you would like to see women's issues from the perspective of a diverse range of people.