Barbara Risman's specialty in sociology is the study of the family structure and the way gender plays a part in it.
Her Book Gender Vertigo is meant to help understand the slow pace of change and gender relations. It shows that we constantly "do gender" in our lives because of the pressure from other people, but families without a patriarchic structure where women and men share responsibilities can do just fine. In the first chapter she talks about the hierarchical structure in families and how it affects us as a structure itself on all levels of society. In chapters 3 she includes a survey to answer her question "can men mother?" and in 4 she tries to understand why some women keep their economic independence and some don't. And lastly, in chapter 5 she shows us examples of "fair families" where the work is equally distributed between parents. She ends with the information that shows how the children of these families still have ideas of what makes a "girl" and "boy" and ends with some thoughts on the future. She knows that gender as a social structure must be "cracked," but only expresses that it can definitely be reinvented and recreated. Her ending quote is that she just hopes that "when the spinning ends we will be in a post-gendered society that is one step closer to a just world."
It is the result of 20 years of research by using surveys and interviews with families and single fathers/mothers. She is extremely picky about the people she chooses in her study, which emphasizes her commitment to the science and brings her even more credibility.
This book is important because it breaks down stereotypes within families that not only oppress mothers and girls, but everyone within the structure itself. For example, in the book we see many young boys putting on a "tough" front and describing themselves how they think will be more accepted in their interviews; as sneaky, mean, and competitive. However, these boys were actually kind, patient, and soft spoken. One can see that when kids are involved in an equal household and are encouraged to be themselves, they can still be pressured by the outside world. This is why we need books like this one- to get these ideas out into the open so that we can all start being ourselves and not have to worry about being strange or not masculine/feminine enough.
Look inside this book ->
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0300080832/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-8875839-8612925#reader-linkIn this review by Stephanie A. Bryson,
http://www.psychservices.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/51/2/256she praises Dr. Risman for many things, including her extensive research and mostly sociological approach to the subject. She also brings up many good ideas found within the book and these interesting facts from it as well:
• In fact, men can mother, and they experience the same difficulties as single mothers when they are the sole parents.
• The career and family choices women make are as strongly predicted by the life circumstances in which they find themselves as by the sum of their gender socialization measured in adolescence.
• "Fair families" do exist and produce healthy, well-adjusted children.
She finds Dr. Risman's book not only inspiring and encouraging for the content, but for the research and processes that she went through to create it. The research and the way she writes the book show how committed she is not only to women and gender studies, but integrating the two into sociology and making them count for something in the field.
In 204, Risman wrote a piece entitled Gender and Society, which "is a multidimensional theory of gender that specifies how gender operates on the individual, international, and institutional levels and interacts with other dimensions of social inequality."
http://www.thundercom.net/som/sociograph24_2.pdfThis reflects an important idea in Women's Studies and the lives of women in general because it is easy to think of gender as limited to some experiences or to certain levels of our lives. So often do we ignore inequality or overlook it that sometimes we really need someone to make us step back and see things for what they really are.
In 2005, Risman co-authored Blending into Equality: Family Diversity Gender Convergence which is found in The Handbook of Women's Studies. This argues that recent changes within families keep reducing the differences between women's and men's roles and theorizes about upcoming radical social changes.
It is really encouraging to see Dr. Risman's work being included in a handbook of Women's Studies, so that people at the lower levels of the subject can be introduced to her ideas. The family may be only one of the institutions that can be oppressive, but it is certainly one that has been swept under the rug enough times without question to warrant it becoming a discussion that we take seriously and actually think about in terms of necessary social change.
at all being involved in organized religion. In fact, she contributes her passion for sociology and feminism to her Jewish roots. It plays a very important part in her life, and her first experience with sexual discrimination and patriarchy actually occurred when she had a bat mitzvah http://www.jewfaq.org/barmitz.htm in 1968 because she was not allowed to read from the Torah http://www.jewfaq.org/torah.htm and the boy's were. Judaism fuels her passion she says because her love of "arguing about the meaning of words, [her] respect for intellectual pursuits, and [her] belief that study is most effective inside a supportive community all reflect Jewish tradition." She has always tried to bring her ethical commitments to research in sociology, and also believes that this is her way "to do tikkum olam," (Hebrew for heal the world.)
