While great strides have been made in documenting discrimination
against women in America, our awareness of discrimination is due in
large part to the efforts of a feminist movement dominated by
middle-class white women, and is skewed to their experiences. Yet
discrimination against racial ethnic women is in fact dramatically
different--more complex and more widespread--and without a window
into the lives of racial ethnic women our understanding of the full
extent of discrimination against all women in America will be
woefully inadequate. Now, in this illuminating volume, Karen
Anderson offers the first book to examine the lives of women in the
three main ethnic groups in the United States--Native American,
Mexican American, and African American women--revealing the many
ways in which these groups have suffered oppression, and the
profound effects it has had on their lives.
Here is a thought-provoking examination of the history of racial
ethnic women, one which provides not only insight into their lives,
but also a broader perception of the history, politics, and culture
of the United States. For instance, Anderson examines the clash
between Native American tribes and the U.S. government
(particularly in the plains and in the West) and shows how the
forced acculturation of Indian women caused the abandonment of
traditional cultural values and roles (in many tribes, women held
positions of power which they had to relinquish), subordination to
and economic dependence on their husbands, and the loss of
meaningful authority over their children. Ultimately, Indian women
were forced into the labor market, the extended family was
destroyed, and tribes were dispersed from the reservationand into
the mainstream--all of which dramatically altered the woman's place
in white society and within their own tribes. The book examines
Mexican-American women, revealing that since U.S. job recruiters in
Mexico have historically focused mostly on low-wage male workers,
Mexicans have constituted a disproportionate number of the illegals
entering the states, placing them in a highly vulnerable position.
And even though Mexican-American women have in many instances
achieved a measure of economic success, in their families they are
still subject to constraints on their social and political autonomy
at the hands of their husbands. And finally, Anderson cites a
wealth of evidence to demonstrate that, in the years since World
War II, African-American women have experienced dramatic changes in
their social positions and political roles, and that the migration
to large urban areas in the North simply heightened the conflict
between homemaker and breadwinner already thrust upon them.
Changing Woman provides the first history of women within each
racial ethnic group, tracing the meager progress they have made
right up to the present. Indeed, Anderson concludes that while
white middle-class women have made strides toward liberation from
male domination, women of color have not yet found, in feminism,
any political remedy to their problems.
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