The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America - Hardcover

Rosen, Ruth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670814628 ISBN 13: 9780670814626

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2000

Synopsis

The role of the women's movement in transforming American society is explored fully in this colorful chronicle of a social revolution, weaving together years of research and dozens of interviews to cover events from the publication of the The Feminine Mystique in 196s to the present. Original.

About this title

Review:

For anyone who wants a thorough introduction to the modern American women's movement, this is it: a rousing story of the revolution by a history professor who participated in its struggles. Ruth Rosen introduces her book by reminding readers of discriminatory practices that were common in pre-1960s America: "Harvard's Lamont Library was off-limits to women for fear they would distract male students. Newspaper ads separated jobs by sex; bars often refused to serve women; some states even excluded women from jury duty; no women ran big corporations or universities, worked as firefighters or police officers." She then proceeds to delineate the changes that make such discrimination seem unthinkable today. Her research takes in popular books, magazines, newspaper articles and television, the details of politics and law, and the individual liberation stories of not only famous feminists and thinkers but many lesser-known women as well.

By the end of the 1970s, there are not only legal abortions, Title IX, and more women than men at American universities but letters like the following submitted to Ms. magazine: "One day last week, I pulled up to a four-way stop in my taxi," writes Jill Wood. "At one of the stop signs sat a police officer in a cruiser, and at the third, a telephone installer in a van. What made the occasion memorable was the fact that all three of us were women. We celebrated with much joyful laughter." Yet, says Rosen, this is only the beginning of the struggle for human rights. The World Split Open should serve to galvanize the energies of a new generation of women and men. --Maria Dolan

About the Author:

Historian and journalist Ruth Rosen is Professor of History at the University of California at Davis. Editor of the highly acclaimed Maime Papers and author of the classic work The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, she also writes regularly for Dissent and The Women's Review of Books. Her frequent op-ed columns appear in The Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0670814628
• ISBN 13: 9780670814626
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 480