Linda Blum - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Linda Blum

American Journal of Sociology, 1999

edu. Articles in the public domain may be used without permission, but it is customary to contact... more edu. Articles in the public domain may be used without permission, but it is customary to contact the author.

Signs, Apr 1, 1988

1Pamela Stone Cain, "Prospects for Pay Equity in a Changing Economy,' in Compar... more 1Pamela Stone Cain, "Prospects for Pay Equity in a Changing Economy,' in Comparable Worth: New Directionsfor Research, ed. Heidi Hartmann (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1985), 137-65, esp. 154-55. William Greer, "Women Gain a Majority in Jobs," New ...

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1988

Sociology of Work: An Encyclopedia, Jul 5, 2013

Sociology of Work: An Encyclopedia, 2013

The SAGE Handbook of Resistance

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Feminism, 2019

Gender & Society, 2004

Since Prozac emerged on the market at the end of 1987, there has been a dramatic increase in anti... more Since Prozac emerged on the market at the end of 1987, there has been a dramatic increase in antidepressant use and in its discussion by popular media. Yet there has been little analysis of the gendered character of this phenomenon despite feminist traditions scrutinizing the medical control of women’s bodies. The authors begin to fill this gap through a detailed content analysis of the 83 major articles on Prozac and its “chemical cousins” appearing in large-circulation periodicals in Prozac’s first 12 years. They find that popular talk about Prozac and its competing brands is largely degendered, presented as manifestly gender neutral, yet replete with latent gendered messages. These are about women with neurochemical imbalances but also about the need to discipline elite female bodies, to enhance their productivity and flexibility. This new form of female “fitness” mirrors demands of the New Economy and indicates how psychiatric discourse contributes to the historically specific s...

Gender & Society, 1996

The authors examine the experiences and ideals of African American working-class mothers through ... more The authors examine the experiences and ideals of African American working-class mothers through 20 intensive interviews. They focus on the women's negotiations with racialized norms of motherhood, represented in the assumptions that legal marriage and an exclusively bonded dyadic relationship with one's children are requisite to good mothering. The authors find, as did earlier phenomenological studies, that the mothers draw from distinct ideals of community-based independence to resist each of these assumptions and carve out alternative scripts based on nonmarital relationships with male partners and shared care of children.

American Journal of Sociology, 2016

Berkeley Journal of Sociology a Critical Review, 1983

Feminist Studies, 1985

INTRODUCTION The popular reception of In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women&am... more INTRODUCTION The popular reception of In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women&amp;#x27;s Development&amp;#x27; by Carol Gilligan sparked intense debate in our feminist theory group. Our group has met, read, and discussed feminist theory and politics for two years. Yet it was only ...

The Sociological Review, 2006

Pairing the above two books for this review-my own bright idea-has proved to be more unwieldy and... more Pairing the above two books for this review-my own bright idea-has proved to be more unwieldy and perhaps more unfair than I had anticipated. Hard Labour appears to be Caroline Gatrell's first major piece of sociological research. A clumsily written book, it examines transitions to parenthood among twenty highly educated, primarily white, married or cohabiting British heterosexual couples. The Ann Oakley Reader, in contrast, represents a culmination, offering a thoughtfully self-edited retrospective of the author's thirty-year career building feminist sociology. It begins from the earliest distinction of social-construct 'gender' from biological 'sex', through discussions of methodology, to a critique of postmodernism. Selections from each of Oakley's path-breaking empirical projects are included as well. The asymmetry of these two works, if unfair, does allow for useful reflection on the lifespan of feminist sociology. Hard Labour is oddly subtitled with the gender-neutral parenthood. Gatrell claims, in contrast to her title, that her primary focus is on mothers, noting that, 'when writers and governments talk with authority about "parenting," they are by implication (especially in the case of very young children) talking about mothers' (p. 3). I could not help but think of Ann Oakley's explicit titles: Becoming a Mother, Women Confined, Subject Women, Social Support and Motherhood; and of her ironic 1998 observation of the changing field, 'This is also the sense in which women's studies became gender studies and "gender" was substituted for "women" in research grant applications because it was

Sociological Forum, 2011

When asked to organize an ''Author Meets Critics'' panel on Markens's Surrogate Motherhood and th... more When asked to organize an ''Author Meets Critics'' panel on Markens's Surrogate Motherhood and the Politics of Reproduction, I was struck by the distances traveled since the initial public discussions she examines. Assisted reproductive techniques and the industries these have ''spawned,'' as Markens instructs, have changed dramatically over just a few decades. Markens actually provides a history of formative public discussions, in press and policy arenas, sparked by the sensationalized Baby M case. This 1987 case involved contracting-couple William and Elizabeth Stern, who fought for custody with Mary Beth Whitehead, the ''surrogate,'' after she refused to relinquish the baby or her parental rights. Utilizing an elegant social problems framework, Markens compares divergent outcomes in two large, ''bellweather'' states: New York banned commercial surrogacy as ''baby selling,'' whereas the California legislature attempted to regulate the practice, emphasizing ''the plight of infertile couples.'' Paradoxically, Markens concludes, both responses upheld normative ideals of family privacy, whether from market or state intrusion, and also upheld the undisputed rights of men as fathers. Now we confront greater disembodiment and pitting of women against each other than in such ''traditional'' cases where the surrogate was the birth mother and simply inseminated with the contracting-father's sperm. Current practice favors splicing off of ova via egg ''donation'' from the ''gestational surrogate,'' a genetic ''stranger'' to the child; and ''mother'' becomes only the woman legally wedded to the contracting-father. Markens analyzes the troubling class and racialized dimensions in all this as, of course, that ''plight'' of public concern is of the white and affluent, while the genetic ''stranger'' is a high-tech mammy, wet-nurse, or domestica. She thus points the way to an

Qualitative Sociology, 2002

... 19th, 1999 Body Wars, the Clash of the Paradigms 313 ... From Sobal and Maurer's col... more ... 19th, 1999 Body Wars, the Clash of the Paradigms 313 ... From Sobal and Maurer's collection, I learned much about individual treatment, though this psychologizes the body's social construction and may represent a demand for new forms of clinical expertise. ...

Gender & Society, 2007

Based on in-depth interviews and fieldwork, this article examines mothers raising kids with invis... more Based on in-depth interviews and fieldwork, this article examines mothers raising kids with invisible, social/emotional/behavioral disabilities to refine feminist theories of mother-blame. The mother-valor/mother-blame binary holds mothers responsible for families and future citizens, maintaining this “natural” care at the center of normative femininity. The author explores how mothers raising such burdensome children understand their experiences and makes three arguments: (1) Fewer mothers are blamed for causing their child's troubles in an era of “brain-blame,” but more are blamed as proximate causes if they do not make unrelenting efforts, paralleling “concerted cultivation,” to resolve them; (2) such mothers often exceed concerted cultivation, as they seize authority, as vigilantes, within educational and medical systems in the midst of turf wars, cost containment, and a resulting proliferation of medication treatments; and (3) this maternal speedup holds mothers accountable...

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2005

book, important to women’s health and to the sociology of the body, on the experience of elective... more book, important to women’s health and to the sociology of the body, on the experience of elective hysterectomy. Surgical removal of the uterus for benign conditions (sometimes with partial or full removal of the ovaries, technically, oophorectomy) might seem to be a relic of past eras in which men’s patriarchal control dominated medicine and devalued women’s bodies. I certainly was under that false impression, supposing that much had changed since 1969 when my mother had an elective hysterectomy at the age of 36. (Of course, I used to think just about everything would be different for my generation of women.) How wrong I was—the prevalence of hysterectomy has changed only modestly, with the uterus of one out of three women today eventually surgically removed (p. 3). A full 25 percent of us will reach menopause surgically (p. 31), with hysterectomy second only to cesarean-section birth among surgeries in the United States today. Only 10 percent of hysterectomies, out of over 600,000 per year, are for cancer treatment. The remaining 90 percent are for serious but almost ordinary conditions that cause persistent pain and bleeding, including benign fibroid tumors and cysts, endometriosis, pelvic inflammatory disease, and chronic pain and bleeding (p. 5). Elson uses the tools of symbolic interactionism to explore the subjective experiences of her 44 respondents and the impact of hysterectomy on gender identity, observing that only a crisis forces us to consider the meanings of our sexual reproductive organs. That is, only the threatened loss of these organs makes us reflect on our taken-for-granted sense of embodied femaleness. Using the vocabulary of biographical work and repair, Elson finds that hysterectomy causes disruption of core gender identity among many of her respondents. For most this reaction is unanticipated, and for some it is also traumatic (p. 156). Though hysterectomy may solve real physical problems, the procedure removes organs whose symbolic and cultural meaning as the essence of womanhood persists well into our postfeminist era. In fact, Elson finds a “hormonal hierarchy” in which respondents cling to their “preserved” ovaries (p. 31); if both can remain this is considered best, but retaining one or even a fragment is considered better than complete removal. In this case, symbolic meaning is attributed to hormones to retain normative gender identity and sexuality far beyond any biological effect. Considering recent findings on the risks of the combined hormone and estrogen replacement therapies used by nearly all her respondents postsurgery, Elson is right to press for both better patient education and improved treatment options. As she concludes, “Perhaps if medical researchers, practitioners, and insurance companies understood the potential significance of sexual reproductive organs” to women’s gender identity, they might more aggressively push for alternatives (p. 197). In raising two key limitations in Elson’s work, I do not want to detract from the intelligence and overall contribution of Am I Still a Woman? Personally, I tend to discount reviews that do not evaluate projects on their own terms. Elson and I come from similar

American Journal of Sociology, 2003