The Paradox of Change: American Women in the 20th Century

When William Chafe's The American Woman was published in 1972, it was hailed as a breakthrough in the study of women in this century. Bella Abzug praised it as "a remarkable job of historical research," and Alice Kessler-Harris called it "an extraordinarily useful synthesis of material about 20th-century women." But much has happened in the last two decades--both in terms of scholarship, and in the lives of American women. With The Paradox of Change, Chafe builds on his classic work, taking full account of the events and scholarship of the last fifteen years, as he extends his analysis into the 1990s with the rise of feminism and the New Right. Chafe conveys all the subtleties of women's paradoxical position in the United States today, showing how women have gradually entered more fully into economic and political life, but without attaining complete social equality or economic justice. Despite the gains achieved by feminist activists during the 1970s and 1980s, the tensions continued to abound between public and private roles, and the gap separating ideals of equal opportunity from the reality of economic discrimination widened. Women may have gained some new rights in the last two decades, but the feminization of poverty has also soared, with women constituting 70% of the adult poor. Moreover, a resurgence of conservatism, symbolized by the triumph of Phyllis Schlafly's anti-ERA coalition, has cast in doubt even some of the new rights of women, such as reproductive freedom. Chafe captures these complexities and contradictions with a lively combination of representative anecdotes and archival research, all backed up by statistical studies. As in The American Woman, Chafe once again examines "woman's place" throughout the 20th century, but now with a more nuanced and inclusive approach. There are insightful portraits of the continuities of women's political activism from the Progressive era through the New Deal; of the contradictory gains and losses of the World War II years; and of the various kinds of feminism that emerged out of the tumult of the 1960s. Not least, there are narratives of all the significant struggles in which women have engaged during these last ninety years--for child care, for abortion rights, and for a chance to have both a family and a career. The Paradox of Change is a wide-ranging history of 20th-century women, thoroughly researched and incisively argued. Anyone who wants to learn more about how women have shaped, and been shaped by, modern America will have to read this book.

About the Author :
William H. Chafe is Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of History at Duke University. He is the author of Women and Equality: Changing Patterns in American Culture, A History of Our Time: Readings on Postwar America, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II, and Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina and the Black Struggle for Freedom.

Review :
"Provides a crisp overview of the present status of American women. This is the era that most texts are especially weak on, but students want to know about."--Anne M. Butler, Utah State University "A very useful survey, which is especially strong in summarizing the literature of the past two decades."--David Stebenne, Ohio State University "An excellent text exploring the boundaries of permissible/acceptable social change in America."--Richard K. Caputo, University of Pennsylvania "Readable and thought-provoking....His revised work will undoubtedly, and deservedly, be read by a new generation of women's studies students."--Marilyn Yalom, Washington Post Book World "A thoughtful re-evaluation of the same themes and issues first faced in the earlier study....[Offers] a very human conclusion to a synthesis of women's history in his century."--CHOICE Praise for the First Edition: "Until Chafe's book, the period 1920-1970 has been a terra mythologica populated by stereotype and misremembrance....Chafe's thorough research now permits us to evaluate the changing contours of women's public roles in the twentieth century."--Virginia Quarterly Review "An extraordinarily useful synthesis of material about the twentieth century woman."--Annals of the American Academy of Political Science "A vast amount of carefully documented information in a readable form. Feminists will find evidence for their arguments in the study, students should be delighted with the generous and wide-ranging bibliography."--The Yale Review "An excellent text, highly suitable for classroom use. It is scholarly and accessible."--Ronald A. Wells, Calvin College "A coherent useful summary of twentieth century women's history valuable for supplement to text."--J. Horn, SUNY Brockport "A good, concise look at American women in the twentieth century....A well-written book."--Dr. Robert W. Langran, Villanova University "A useful extension of [Chafe's] own earlier work. Not only has he provided a distillation and synthesis of complexities of twenthieth century thought on woman's status; he has provided a compact, readable handbook for students and others seeking pathways through the mazes of the new scholarship in this field."--Frances Richardson Keller, San Francisco State University