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How I lost my false consciousness and found women's liberation

Bart, Pauline

Off our backs, 1982-05, Vol.12 (5), p.7

Washington: Off Our Backs, Inc

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Título:
How I lost my false consciousness and found women's liberation
Autor: Bart, Pauline
Assuntos: Academic degrees ; Colleges & universities ; Education ; Graduate studies ; Higher education ; Minority & ethnic groups ; Personal profiles
É parte de: Off our backs, 1982-05, Vol.12 (5), p.7
Notas: ObjectType-Article-1
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ObjectType-Feature-2
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Descrição: I spent the decade being a permissive mother and sloppy house-keeper. I felt I was suffocating because I was not able to read. Once I tried reading the West Coast edition of the New York Times and my son started to eat the newspaper. All the news that's fit to eat! When my son was three I tried to return to school. I spent a year in Boston where my husband went to the Harvard School of Public Health and received his M.S. I thought I could still be "only" one degree ahead of him were I to obtain my Ph.D. I had been working part-time at Boston State Hospital on a Harvard project on schizophrenia. It was there that I became interested in the sociology of mental illness. The sociologists there encouraged me to return for my Ph.D So soon after my arrival back in Culver City, I went over to the sociology department where I had been one of the star graduate students and, in a manner befitting the fifties, said to the chairman (that's what they were then) "The people at Harvard say I should go for my Ph.D. What do you think? Do you think I can do it?" He asked if I would be limited to the L.A. area for jobs and I said that I supposed I would. He asserted that I would never get a job and suggested that I apply to the School of Social Work if I were interested in mental health. Mind you, he is cooling me out of a Ph.D. and suggesting that I obtain another master's degree, this time in a traditional women's field. And what did I do? I dutifully trotted over to Social Work and applied. Since it was clear in my interview that I was not interested in being a social worker I was not accepted. Since I could think of no alternative, and since I thought that "only children" had problems, I became pregnant once more. To this day I say that Leonard Broom (the Chair of Sociology at the time) was responsible for the birth of my daughter. The shock I experienced was exacerbated by two factors. First my Department did not support me when I asked them to boycott a college that was limiting its hiring to "Christian gentlemen" thus would not hire me because I was a woman and a Jew. (When the sociologist on that campus apologized to me saying he "couldn't sell a woman to the President" I said I didn't know if it were because I was a woman or because I was Jewish. He said, "That didn't help either.") Second, I was not given a temporary position at my University, a position that was fairly routine for competent graduate students, because I was "emotional and dependent." At that moment I knew there was no individual solution, as the newly emergent women's movement was saying. Marlene Dixon, one of the early theorists of the women's movement who was in my graduate cohort, was criticized for not being "nice" the way I was, i.e. not being feminine, and I was not being given a job because I was "feminine." I was told also that my emotions showed on my face; it was unclear what part of my antomy they were supposed to show on. I became very depressed. I had suffered a loss of faith. The University was the one institution in which I had trust and it had failed me. Later on, as a sociologist, I realized that all institutions of a society reinforce each other and the University was no different. In fact time has shown that the University is worse then other institutions on affirmative action issues. Because of the interest in work on women stemming from the market for books and articles caused by the women's movement and the emerging field of women's studies, I had quite a few articles published as well as the Student Sociologist's Handbook (1970), a feminist and radical survival kit for sociology students. Therefore, I had published enough to be tenured. I know that I would not have met the requirements were it not for the women's movement and I try to pay my dues by using my power to be a resource for women. I am angered by women who "made it" because of the Movement, but are into what I call "surplus survival," i.e., even after receiving tenure being mainly concerned with their own advancement. My revolution is not one in which women act like men.
Editor: Washington: Off Our Backs, Inc
Idioma: Inglês

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How I lost my false consciousness and found women's liberation

Bart, Pauline

Washington: Off Our Backs, Inc

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