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Jessie Bernard, in this serious book, pulls into an analytic framework the research, theory, and polemics about the status and problems of women as they relate to public policy. With a scholarly, deeply concerned eye, the author comprehensively examines areas of public interest, human resource development and utilization, self-fulfillment and sex roles, and the women's liberation movement. Bernard argues that sexual division of labor is at odds with the "general welfare" provision of the Constitution, and that artificial sexual allocation of function impedes the "pursuit of happiness" mandate of the Declaration of Independence. Avoiding both the shrillness of political rhetoric about women's rights and the dullness of an impersonal research paper, Bernard writes knowledgeably and sympathetically about what women can and should do to change public policy and achieve their goals. She combs the sociological and related literatures to document and analyze women's special burdens and disadvantages in American society and concludes that a radical redrawing of sex roles is necessary. A generally positive discussion of the recent women's liberation movement, including portraits of some of its leaders drawn from personal interviews, is also included. Designed for all readers, the book can readily serve as an overview of the historical roots of the women's movement. It provides excellent reading for courses in social psychology and sociology. Guidance counselors and personnel directors will find this book of continuing use, in their practical activities on behalf of career-oriented women.
Winner of the 2017 Outstanding Book Award from the Popular Communication Division of the International Communication Association (ICA) Nearly as soon as television began to enter American homes in the late 1940s, social activists recognized that it was a powerful tool for shaping the nation’s views. By targeting broadcast regulations and laws, both liberal and conservative activist groups have sought to influence what America sees on the small screen. Public Interests describes the impressive battles that these media activists fought and charts how they tried to change the face of American television. Allison Perlman looks behind the scenes to track the strategies employed by several key groups of media reformers, from civil rights organizations like the NAACP to conservative groups like the Parents Television Council. While some of these campaigns were designed to improve the representation of certain marginalized groups in television programming, as Perlman reveals, they all strove for more systemic reforms, from early efforts to create educational channels to more recent attempts to preserve a space for Spanish-language broadcasting. Public Interests fills in a key piece of the history of American social reform movements, revealing pressure groups’ deep investments in influencing both television programming and broadcasting policy. Vividly illustrating the resilience, flexibility, and diversity of media activist campaigns from the 1950s onward, the book offers valuable lessons that can be applied to current battles over the airwaves.
This detailed, scholarly work describes the interaction of the League of Women Voters from its inception in 1920 up to and through the Nixon administration. The book consists of a dense, narrative history, focusing primarily on the actions of the league's leadership. The efforts of the league to remain nonpartisan constitute an important recurring theme, as does the league's informal `specialization' in the field of foreign affairs. Particularly impressive are the descriptions of the league's tactical adaptations to a changing political environment. The authors have provided an invaluable analysis or evaluation, but the accounts of events make this an important historical reference. Library Journal When the Nineteenth Amendment became law on August 26, 1920, women as newly enfranchised voters entered an era of political rights and responsibilities for which, as a subordinate class, they were unprepared. In the Public Interest, the first book about the League of Women Voters, details the vital role played by the League as a force in shaping the political participation of American women from 1920 to 1970. From its beginnings, the League, a major surviving offspring of the women's suffrage movement, exemplified the nonpartisanship, political skills, lobbying methods, and grass-roots organizational capabilities previously employed in winning the vote for women. During its early years, the League devised the strategies for capturing the energies and ideals of the suffrage movement and directing them to broadly defined goals of social reform and good government. To achieve these ends, the League learned to work through political institutions at all levels: local and state governments, the three branches of Federal government, and both political parties. Young shows how the League implemented these strategies and, in the process, developed methods of political education and provided political experience that strengthened American democracy by contributing to the growth of thousands of citizens. The volume highlights some of the needed legislation advanced by the League during the fifty-year period covered, including the Sheppard-Towner Act for the public protection of maternity and infancy in the '20s; the fight for the TVA; the extension of the Civil Service merit system in the the '30s; and efforts in areas of individual liberties during the McCarthy era, civil rights, and international relations. Also addressed are the League's efforts to free women from discrimination and its differences with the Woman's Party on protective legislation and the Equal Rights Amendment. Based on the historical collection of League documents in the Library of Congress, which Young cataloged, this groundbreaking study will be especially interesting to students and scholars in Women's Studies and feminists as well as readers interested in theories of organization, political participation, and characteristics of small groups and leadership.
“Worth a read for anyone who cares about making change happen.”—Barack Obama A powerful new blueprint for how governments and nonprofits can harness the power of digital technology to help solve the most serious problems of the twenty-first century As the speed and complexity of the world increases, governments and nonprofit organizations need new ways to effectively tackle the critical challenges of our time—from pandemics and global warming to social media warfare. In Power to the Public, Tara Dawson McGuinness and Hana Schank describe a revolutionary new approach—public interest technology—that has the potential to transform the way governments and nonprofits around the world solve problems. Through inspiring stories about successful projects ranging from a texting service for teenagers in crisis to a streamlined foster care system, the authors show how public interest technology can make the delivery of services to the public more effective and efficient. At its heart, public interest technology means putting users at the center of the policymaking process, using data and metrics in a smart way, and running small experiments and pilot programs before scaling up. And while this approach may well involve the innovative use of digital technology, technology alone is no panacea—and some of the best solutions may even be decidedly low-tech. Clear-eyed yet profoundly optimistic, Power to the Public presents a powerful blueprint for how government and nonprofits can help solve society’s most serious problems.
In this provocative interdisciplinary essay, Joan B. Landes examines the impact on women of the emergence of a new, bourgeois organization of public life in the eighteenth century. She focuses on France, contrasting the role and representation of women under the Old Regime with their status during and after the Revolution. Basing her work on a wide reading of current historical scholarship, Landes draws on the work of Habermas and his followers, as well as on recent theories of representation, to re-create public-sphere theory from a feminist point of view.Within the extremely personal and patriarchal political culture of Old Regime France, elite women wielded surprising influence and power, both in the court and in salons. Urban women of the artisanal class often worked side by side with men and participated in many public functions. But the Revolution, Landes asserts, relegated women to the home, and created a rigidly gendered, essentially male, bourgeois public sphere. The formal adoption of "universal" rights actually silenced public women by emphasizing bourgeois conceptions of domestic virtue.In the first part of this book, Landes links the change in women's roles to a shift in systems of cultural representation. Under the absolute monarchy of the Old Regime, political culture was represented by the personalized iconic imagery of the father/king. This imagery gave way in bourgeois thought to a more symbolic system of representation based on speech, writing, and the law. Landes traces this change through the art and writing of the period. Using the works of Rousseau and Montesquieu as examples of the passage to the bourgeois theory of the public sphere, she shows how such concepts as universal reason, law, and nature were rooted in an ideologically sanctioned order of gender difference and separate public and private spheres. In the second part of the book, Landes discusses the discourses on women's rights and on women in society authored by Condorcet, Wollstonecraft, Gouges, Tristan, and Comte within the context of these new definitions of the public sphere. Focusing on the period after the execution of the king, she asks who got to be included as "the People" when men and women demanded that liberal and republican principles be carried to their logical conclusion. She examines women's roles in the revolutionary process and relates the birth of modern feminism to the silencing of the politically influential women of the Old Regime court and salon and to women's expulsion from public participation during and after the Revolution.
Kristin A. Goss examines how women’s civic place has changed over the span of more than 120 years, how public policy has driven these changes, and why these changes matter for women and American democracy. As measured by women’s groups’ appearances before the U.S. Congress, women’s collective political engagement continued to grow between 1920 and 1960—when many conventional accounts claim it declined—and declined after 1980, when it might have been expected to grow. Goss asks what women have gained, and perhaps lost, through expanded incorporation, as well as whether single-sex organizations continue to matter in 21st-century America.
Women in Public Administration: Theory and Practice provides a comprehensive exploration of the gender dimension in public administration through a unique collection of writings by women in the field.
As a book on public policy, this book is unique in addressing explicitly the role of human nature. Only with a good understanding of human nature can policy makers address their foremost needs and anticipate how people may respond to specific designs in policy. This way policy makers can avoid "unintended consequences." The book also provides a new perspective on the meaning of public interest, which is based on intellectual roots dating back to J.S.Mill and more recently Harsanyi and Rawls. Traditionally, economists have referred to either the Hicksian criterion or the Kaldorian criterion as the yardstick to whether a policy is welfare enhancing, not realizing that both of these criteria fail abjectly in producing a convincing test for welfare improvement. This is because ex post, typically some people will gain and some people will lose from any policy. The author argues for an alternative, ex ante welfare increase criterion that is based on how people would assess a policy if they were completely impartial and totally ignored their personal interests. It applies the principles to key policy concerns such as health policy, tort law reform, education and cultural policy, and pension reform. The healthcare reform proposals in the book illustrate the application of the principles. The author proposes a basic protection plan under which standard basic healthcare services are priced the same whether they are provided by public or private caregivers—at levels that can contain both demand side and supply side moral hazard. Annual eligible healthcare expenses are capped to alleviate worries. A "Lifetime Healthcare Supplement" that includes an element of risk sharing adds to patients’ choice and protection without compromising fiscal sustainability.
Women and Public Life in Early Meiji Japan focuses on women’s activities in the new public spaces of Meiji Japan. With chapters on public, private, and missionary schools for girls, their students, and teachers, on social and political groups women created, on female employment, and on women’s participation in print media, this book offers a new perspective on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japanese history. Women’s founding of and participation in conflicting discourses over the value of women in Meiji public life demonstrate that during this period active and vocal women were everywhere, that they did not meekly submit to the dictates of the government and intellectuals over what women could or should do, and that they were fully integrated in the production of Meiji culture. Mara Patessio shows that the study of women is fundamental not only in order to understand fully the transformations of the Meiji period, but also to understand how later generations of women could successfully move the battle forward. Women and Public Life in Early Meiji Japan is essential reading for all students and teachers of 19th- and early 20th-century Japanese history and is of interest to scholars of women’s history more generally.