FLUX: Women on Sex, Work, Kids, Love, and Life in a Half-Changed World
Peggy Orenstein
New York, NY: Doubleday, 2000 (cloth) / Knopf, 2001 (paper)
Cloth: $25.00 / Paper: $14.00
Pages: 324
ISBN: cloth 0385498861 / paper 038549887X

Peggy Orenstein's FLUX accurately reflects the duality and tension experienced by women professionals in 21^st Century America. In particular, the twenty-something women portrayed in the book struggle with the myriad of choices a purportedly "post-feminist" world presents to them. In the `60s and `70s, women firmly believed that it was possible to "have it all,", but since then women have discovered that the "all" they can have depends on what they are willing to settle for, and which ambitions they are willing to temper, or suppress. Orenstein writes sympathetically but objectively about contemporary young women, who seem unable to reconcile the demands of earning a living in a "career" – as opposed to a "job" – with the other interests and needs in their lives.

Women have a harder time of it, say many of the interviewees in FLUX. To this extent, the real women lawyers in FLUX mirror their (so often otherwise unrealistic) counterparts in film and television. In the chapter "High Potential Female," Orenstein profiles Mira, whose successful corporate career gets in the way of her relationship with a boyfriend ambivalent about her rise to the top and causes other women to see her as a threat. In this exchange between Mira and another interviewee, Paula, we see the conflict played out by almost every woman lawyer in television or film at one point or another. Orenstein writes: "[T]he worst career strategy a woman can employ is to try to be like men. 'Some women try to take everything that's feminine in them and erase it,' Paula says. 'Or they'll swear a lot. Men recognize women who are doing that and they don't like it. If they're going to deal with a woman, they want her to be a woman. They may be uncomfortable with you being there at all, but it's worse if you pretend to be a man.' Mira nods, but she looks uncertain. By advising her to be at once conscious and unconscious that she is female, Paula has struck at the heart of the corporate double bind: Women who are perceived as stereotypically feminine are considered ineffectual, but those who are seen as too masculine are considered to be overly aggressive." (51)

One of the criticisms that I and other commentators aim at the portrayal of female lawyers in popular culture is the tendency toward extreme, almost caricaturish images of female attorneys. Women lawyers are often either excellent at their jobs but terrible human beings – think of Rosalind Shays in L. A. Law, who is so disagreeable that the writers dispose of her by shoving her down an elevator shaft, or Laura Fischer in The Verdict, who betrays the hero Frank Galvin. Or women lawyers are depicted as inept or goofy, but wonderfully caring people – Reggie Love in The Client, whose client has to remind her that children have rights, too, or Glenda Parks in Seems Like Old Times, whose soft heart leads her to hire her recidivist clients as household help. If they are good lawyers and nice human beings (Renee Jackson in Any Day Now, Teddi Barnes in Jagged Edge, Janet Venable in Primal Fear), they can't catch a man, "catch" being the operative word. In Ally McBeal, the title character jumps from one dreadful love affair to another. Nelle, who personifies the beautiful and capable woman attorney, is also a traitor (attempting to leave the firm and take important clients with her). She is also somewhat mean-spirited in her dealings with other women, implying that attractive, successful women are necessarily jealous and insecure. Similarly, Ling, who begins her association with the firm as a client but eventually joins as a partner, is viewed as abrasive, overly concerned with her appearance, and ungenerous. Indeed, her image is so extreme that the writers devote a special episode to show that she is, indeed, capable of caring about others ("Angels and Blimps," airdate 2/8/99). Orenstein's work reminds us that if "reel" women are in a no-win situation, that is because real women in the 21^st Century in the United States are similarly situated.

Women are supposed to want to be mothers, but as Orenstein points out in the chapter "Pinning the Butterfly," finding women willing to acknowledge the biological imperative, and come to terms with it, was difficult. "Some of the women I met during my two-year search had never spoken of their doubts about mothering to anyone; it made them feel that aberrant, that guilt-stricken." (122) Women like Belinda, the law school graduate who makes a conscious choice to pursue another career less threatening to her husband, have tremendous problems subordinating their obvious desires and abilities to what their feminist peers may consider a "lesser" path. "Passionate about labor rights, she'd earned a law degree, then opted against practicing, in part because, if she ever did have children she felt the hours required of lawyers would be untenable." (123-124).

In "One Woman, Two Worlds," Orenstein explores the dating game in which single professional women look for Mr. Right, or at least Mr. Not Obviously Wrong. In particular, she focuses on Shay, a young black physician, desperately seeking a compatible man. "The 'man shortage' among whites may be a myth, but for black women it's quite real: African American women are approximately fifty percent more likely to graduate college than their male peers, and a disproportionate number of black men are indigent, incarcerated, or on drugs." (88) How can an accomplished African-American woman like Shay find an intelligent, educated, liberated black man willing to make room in his life for her? Shay admits that she rarely tells men who attract her that she is a doctor. " 'I tell them I'm in nursing school, or I don't say what I do.' I ask her why not. 'I don't know,' she says. . . . 'Maybe it's just because I want to forget I'm a doctor. . . . Or maybe it's because people have expectations of doctors.'" (92) Shay has already accepted the fact that in a limited market, men set the conditions for intimacy and many of them don't find financially independent women attractive for the long term.

Other important insights emerge from the pages of FLUX, among them the unacknowledged but real jealousy between accomplished and powerful women and their less fortunate sisters. Says one FLUX subject, "'[Y]ou know . . . whatever tension there is between . . . men and . . . women, it's triplicate between women and women. That I wasn't prepared for. The tension between elite women and their secretaries. Or the tension between childless women and mothers. The women are even less understanding than the men. The men at least have kids. And they take time off. The women work like killer bees.'" (253)

FLUX is too intense to read in one sitting. It requires the reader to enter the lives of Orenstein's interviewees, which can be a painful and emotional experience. This is particularly so because so many of these women have made compromises imposed by society or circumstance, and their unhappiness and confusion radiates to the reader.

The book's great value is in its documentation of different women facing the same problems of love, child care, career conflict, and self-doubt, attacking them according to their own abilities and energies. What we can do is take the mixed messages and double standards to heart. We can admit that FLUX is disturbing and challenging, and actively seek acceptable resolutions, if not perfect justice. Orenstein reminds us that a great number of talented, willing women are sacrificing their dreams because they think if they cannot "have it all," then they are somehow deficient. What FLUX conveys to these women, and to the men and women who come after them, is that a range of choices is now available, and that no choice is the wrong choice, if it is freely made.

Christine Corcos is Associate Professor of Law at Louisiana State University Law Center. Her scholarship includes the analysis of portrayals of women lawyers in television and film.

A Look At Everyday Equality
by Amy J. Longo

Reading Peggy Orenstein's FLUX, I was reminded of feelings I experienced attending consciousness-raising sessions as a Women's Studies major in the early 1990s – the sensation of wanting to grab every person I saw and say, "Listen to this! This is what we're going through!" And it is not accidental, for Orenstein certainly references the oral "herstory" tradition in FLUX, which recounts her in-depth interviews of over two hundred women between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five during the course of four years, regarding their views on "sex, work, love, kids and life" – and much more.

In FLUX, Orenstein has amassed enough material for several years of consciousness-raising. But her compilation of these women's stories reflects a deft editing hand. This is herstory told in compellingly structured layers that build on and complement each other, circling back to critical themes throughout; centrally: Why can or can't women today "have it all?" Or do they? Orenstein posits that "Statistics can't tell us . . . how real women . . . perceive their opportunities and constraints in the personal and public realms, how they approach dilemmas involving ambition, sexuality, economic self-sufficiency, partnering, and childbearing in the wake of monumental but incomplete change." (4-5) FLUX can, and does.

FLUX is Orenstein's second book in this decidedly feminist genre. Her first, entitled Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap (1994), examined the forces that shape girls' self-image and goals, based on her interviews with girls from across the country. Orenstein came upon the idea for a book about women's views of themselves out of many women's reactions to Schoolgirls – a sense of wonder that despite the progress toward women's equality, girls' sense of self remained heavily impacted by gendered expectations. Orenstein realized that women could not hope to change the "social forces that squelch the hopes of so many girls" if they did not recognize their impact in their own lives. (2) Personal forces also motivated Orenstein, for she recounts in FLUX her own wrestling with the decision, at thirty-four, of whether or not to become a mother.

Getting to Know Women

Orenstein's reporting provides a wonderful mix of context-setting description and recounted dialogue. She relates just enough information about her subjects so that a reader can almost picture them. For example, recalling Mira, a young executive at a Manhattan financial services conglomerate, Orenstein describes her "casual tweed pants suit, the result of a newly relaxed dress code," the Dilbert cartoons and pizza menu tacked to her office bulletin board, and her belief that "in Corporate America . . . you have to have corporate hair." (42) When we meet Carrie, a former district attorney and stay-at-home mother of two, we learn that her eyes have a "friendly, quizzical look," and that she's been "surprised by the feeling of freedom she finds in motherhood." (166, 175) Orenstein describes the "weekend uniform" of Emily, an associate partner at an international business consulting firm and mother of three, as "sweatpants, a Polartec pullover, and fleece slippers." (186) On the other hand, Wendy, a single forty-one year old corporate vice-president, has "a forest green Miata convertible" – a "single woman's car." (237)

It is this type of personalization that makes FLUX eminently readable. By introducing us in a fair amount of detail to so many of the women she interviewed, Orenstein showcases the breadth of her subjects and their diversity. Getting to know Orenstein's subjects makes readers that much more invested in learning how their individual stories turn out. At the same time, the length of Orenstein's portraits is well-varied. Sometimes she concentrates on one woman's story across several chapters; other times she introduces us to a group of several women at once; sometimes she provides just snippets of her interviews with her subjects.

The diversity of Orenstein's subjects is impressive. Women from all forms of professional life are represented – women in advertising, publishing, film, education, law, medicine, social work, finance, technology, consulting, sales, and other industries. She has interviewed women from across the country, from cities like New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Oakland, and Washington D.C., to suburbs in New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Illinois and Minnesota, to name a few. Orenstein talks to women who are single, dating, living with someone, married, divorced, widowed, remarried; women who have no children to women with as many as four children.

Another interesting feature of FLUX is that Orenstein interviews the people surrounding her subjects, such as boyfriends, husbands and family members. For example, one husband observes his astonishment at how many of the dynamic women in his own workplace "transform" in social settings with their mates, becoming "more passive." (200) A father who stayed at home for the first year of his daughter's life recounts his surprise at the "constantness . . . the lack of breaks" of early childcare, and at the same time, the "absolutely tangible" feeling of parental love. (174) The mother of a woman who chose to have a child without a partner reflects how hard she feared it would be for her daughter, and how hard it is; yet, it is "the best thing she's done." (154)

The organization of FLUX into roughly the three decades of life of the women Orenstein interviewed – the 20s, 30s, and 40s – gives the book a natural flow. At the same time, by selecting the labels for each period that she does, Orenstein in some ways commits herself to a restricting view of what women of any given age are experiencing. Since Orenstein is so careful elsewhere in FLUX to shun static views of women's paths, these descriptive conventions feel somewhat out of place. On the other hand, the organization provides a logical progression through stages that many women, at least, are experiencing in those decades, such as beginning one's career, deciding whether or not to partner, whether or not to have children, how far to advance one's career, whether and how to return to the workforce, etc.

Much More Than A Collection of Stories

Woven among the interviews Orenstein recounts are statistics and facts that give another kind of context to the women's experiences she shares. Some of the hardest-hitting statistics appear in the Introduction, where Orenstein reminds us that, as of the late 1990s, women's earnings were still 74% of men's; women comprised 27% of lawyers but only 13% of law partners; 48% of managers but only 3% of "top earners;" 43% of tenure track professors but only 26% of tenured professors. (4)

Throughout FLUX, Orenstein gently reminds readers some of the reasons why women are faced with the difficult choices and tradeoffs the book describes. For example, speaking to women in their 20s, the period Orenstein labels "The Promise," she notes that while many young women grew up in a time when discrimination against women was illegal and abortion legal, "beneath their boundless optimism lies a sneaking suspicion that the rhetoric of 'choices' is in part a con job, disguising impossible dilemmas as matters of personal preference." (18)

Orenstein intersperses her interviews with sociological studies. For example, one study shows that women tend to self-select off of the most ambitious career paths, in favor of jobs that provide more flexible options for women with families; and another demonstrates that top-ranking women executives are more likely to be unmarried and childless, while 90% of top-ranking male executives are married with children.

Talking to women in their 30s, the period Orenstein calls "The Crunch," she observes: "Sometime in her early to mid-thirties, no matter what she does – whether she is single or married, avidly pursues a career or scales back, has children or does not – the contradiction between a woman's vision of equality and the tug of tradition will get her right in the gut." (97)

Here, Orenstein notes, for example, a psychologist's observation that society does not have a term for a woman without children that does not imply absence. On the other hand, she cites studies showing that mothers who work often micromanage their children's lives in an effort to "cling to maternal control." (111) Recounting the stories of midlife women, or what Orenstein labels the period of "Reconsiderations," she notes pop culture's less than balanced depiction of women over thirty who choose not to marry – for example, the popularity of the book The Rules that "urg[es] women to see their marital status rather than the quality of their lives as the true measure of happiness." (241)

Orenstein's use of sociological, psychological and feminist studies throughout FLUX is subtle and well-balanced. Although her focus is on recounting her interviewees' stories, her intermittent reference to these secondary sources grounds the work in a more academic perspective. For readers who might not sit down and read these studies, FLUX provides an effortless exposure to some recent thinking in these areas.

Orenstein is careful to be balanced and inclusive of women from all different ages (within her stated parameters), ethnicities, races, sexualities and geographic locations. One omission, however, is of women from lower income levels or women living in poverty. Orenstein is upfront about this, stating that she focused on college-educated women because she wanted to talk to women who "believed they had options." (8) One could question, though, whether any discussion of the state of women's lives today is complete without looking at the lives of women with fewer options.

Ultimately, Orenstein is optimistic about the way women are negotiating the challenges of a "half-changed world." In the afterword, entitled "Thriving in a Time of Flux," Orenstein concludes that progress is needed in several areas before women will experience greater fulfillment. It is not so simple as having men do more of their share of household and childcare responsibilities; women have to let them, and refrain from micromanaging, Orenstein chides. Women who stay home need to strive for "intellectual and economic equality" in that situation, while the workplace needs to do more to support working mothers. Above all, women need to share their experiences and "talk across lines of age and circumstance," rather than clustering among women who have made the same choices that they have.

Feminists will, no doubt, delight in FLUX, which takes its place among, while paying homage to, the deeply rooted twin traditions of oral herstory and consciousness-raising. But FLUX has a much broader appeal. Orenstein truly delivers on her goal of expanding the way readers think about "women's – and men's – lives," to inspire "the search for a more satisfied life." (11) A reader cannot help but take away at least one story that contributes to her own search.

Amy J. Longo, an alumna of Columbia Law School, is a litigation attorney with the Newport Beach office of O'Melveny & Myers LLP, and is an Associate Editor of the American Bar Association Section of Litigation's bi-monthly periodical Litigation News.

So Many Options . . . So Many Choices
by Ruth D. Kahn

Peggy Orenstein is to be commended for her highly insightful book, FLUX. The work is comprehensive, well written, and thought-provoking. In it, Orenstein accurately identifies and analyzes the myriad of issues facing young women today, including (1) the choice of one's career; (2) the decision of whether to marry and, if so, when; (3) how to balance being "a good wife" with a challenging career; (4) differences between how men and women are perceived in the workplace; (5) the issue of whether to have children; (5) the effect of having children on a woman's career and (7) how to balance children and marriage with all the other demands modern women face.

While most of the book is upbeat, Orenstein demonstrates that for many women there is "a cost" with attempting to "have it all." While women certainly have more choices today than they have ever had before, those choices in turn create more conflict.

Through her conversations with more than two hundred women between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five, Orenstein explores what it is like for an ambitious woman to fulfill her career goals while trying to maintain the more traditional roles of wife and mother.

Orenstein describes her candid conversations with these women with such clarity that the reader can readily identify with them. As a woman, an attorney in a law firm who was recently elected to the firm's partnership, a wife, and a mother, I saw myself (as well as my colleagues and friends) in many of the women who were interviewed for the book.

While Orenstein's interviews with women demonstrate that you can't "have it all," they also show that women can still lead happier, more fulfilling lives than were possible a generation or two ago. More jobs are open to women in male-dominated fields, and many workplaces offer flexible or part-time schedules, allowing women to have challenging careers and to feel that they still have an active role in raising a family.

Orenstein describes one woman, "Emily," to whom I can particularly relate. Emily is a mother of three and a partner at a business consulting firm. She has a satisfying, well-paying career, a husband who does his share of the child rearing, reliable daycare, a comfortable home, and solid investments for retirement. To her, the key is having all of these things work together. Without good daycare or a supportive husband, Emily says she would not have advanced on the job as much as she has. She believes her career enhances her mental health and her marriage yet, in order to achieve this, Emily realizes she has had to let go of her ideal of "the perfect mother" and to delegate many physical acts of care taking. Yet, no one seems to be suffering. As Emily notes, she feels her children are not being raised with any less attention than she was as "the fourth of seven children."

As a result of her flexible attitude, Emily is one prototype of the modern-day woman. The book is full of other examples of other women who choose to have careers while raising children single-handedly, who elect to stay childless, etc. If the book demonstrates anything, it shows that there are many approaches to dealing with the many issues that face us. All young women should read it.

Ruth D. Kahn is a partner with Steptoe & Johnson LLP in Los Angeles, California. Her practice focuses on complex torts and product liability litigation.

Beyond Victimization: New Approaches to Gender Violence and Law Reform
by Julie Goldscheid & Mary McGowan Davis

Battered Women and Feminist Lawmaking
Elizabeth M. Schneider
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000
Cloth: $29.95
Pp. 232
ISBN: 0300083432

Professor Elizabeth M. Schneider's Battered Women and Feminist Lawmaking, a groundbreaking account of the evolution of domestic violence legal reforms, comes at a key moment in the history of legislative and judicial efforts to address the problem. As the book recounts, there have been tremendous legal and policy advances in addressing domestic violence, yet formidable challenges remain. For example, in the same year the book was published, Congress reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), with $3.3 billion in funding, and the Supreme Court invalidated VAWA's civil rights remedy as beyond federal legislative power. The first event suggests that government may be receptive to one of the central insights of Schneider's excellent and authoritative book -- that women and families in crisis need a wide range of social services and criminal justice responses. The second reflects the difficulties inherent in realizing the larger, more insistent theme sounded by Schneider: that no real progress will be achieved in eradicating violence from women's lives until it is addressed as a matter of gender equality. By documenting the debates, the reform efforts, and the theoretical and political context in which the battered women's movement has grown, Schneider provides a valuable foundation upon which to build future initiatives.

While some of her observations may strike readers familiar with the gender wars as unremarkable, Schneider's comprehensive treatment of intimate violence will appeal to a wide audience. Scholars, practitioners, social service providers, judges, and lawmakers will find in this thought-provoking volume a wealth of information, making it essential reading for all who are interested in the subject. Schneider, who is a professor at Brooklyn Law School, brings vast knowledge to bear on her discussion of the history of the battered women's movement and the contradictions between theory and practice that complicate efforts to assist women in crisis and effect real change in their lives. The author's experiences as a litigator, a scholar, and a thinker committed to transforming the boundaries of the debate give this magisterial work an authenticity that underscores the dilemmas she identifies and adds urgency to her appeals for reform.

History of the Battered Women's Movement

Schneider begins her discussion of domestic violence with a lucid, readable chapter surveying the history of battering, and of women's efforts to situate the problem of domestic abuse within the larger framework of gender-motivated violence. This is one of the most compelling chapters in the book, both because it documents the truly absorbing account of the birth of a social movement and because, in setting forth historical perspectives on battering, Schneider's sometimes impenetrable academic prose takes on a welcome transparency. As recounted by Schneider, domestic violence has been known in virtually every culture throughout history. From early Roman law, which accorded a husband the right to beat, murder, or divorce his wife for offenses assertedly compromising his honor, to the Catholic Church's 15^th Century endorsement of wife beating as evidencing a husband's concern for his wife's soul, the pertinent laws treated domestic abuse differently from other cases of assault and battery. Invoking the work of such scholars as Linda Gordon, Elizabeth Pleck, and Reva Siegel, Schneider traces the evolution of the battered women's movement and situates the problem of domestic violence in America within the larger context of women's history.

From Struggling "Sister" to "Client"

Professor Schneider carries forward the story of the struggle to transform the focus of the movement's energy from its early fixation on the pathology of the battered woman as an impaired "victim" in need of sustenance and shelter, to the contemporary preoccupation with the battered woman as a "client" who is properly the subject of attention by health and social service professionals. In this current emphasis on battering as a social problem – the "inevitable" outgrowth of poverty and a violence-prone culture – Schneider laments the disappearance of the "explicitly political" (21) outlook prevalent during the consciousness-raising era of the late 1960s and early 70s, when feminists viewed battered women as "sisters" whose experience of violence belonged to a larger pattern, common to all women, of systematic gender subordination and institutionalized male dominance.

To counteract this trend of treating domestic violence in isolation, divorced from the wider context of women's history, Schneider calls attention to the developing international human rights campaign that is focusing the world's attention on the problem of violence against women. She is optimistic that this human rights discourse, which speaks to women's right to be free of gender violence and links the problem of violence to issues of equality, reproductive freedom, and economic opportunity, will galvanize "domestic violence work in this country within the explicitly feminist political and expansive social vision that first inspired the issue's advocates." (28)

Despite the centrality of the term "feminist lawmaking" to Schneider's book, she spends several chapters detailing various theories of feminism articulated by other scholars before she succinctly defines feminist lawmaking on battering as "a process by which women's experiences with battering are translated into law." (101) This revelation – which Schneider develops in a first-rate, deeply absorbing discussion of the practical consequences of how the term battering is defined in the first place – is the heart of Schneider's book and offers rich rewards for practitioners and theorists alike.

Key to feminist lawmaking, Schneider persuasively argues, is the notion that battered women's concrete experiences must be the starting point for developing and shaping the law. Unless judges and juries can really understand what the "coercive dimension[s]" (102) of a violent relationship actually mean to the victim who is struggling to survive one, they will have no context in which to evaluate the factual and legal claims put before them. One method of ensuring that women's voices are heard by courts determining weighty issues that impact women's interests is submission of an amicus curiae brief, which litigators have used to educate judges about the broader implications of their decisions. Another means of incorporating battered women's daily experiences into litigation strategy is the use of expert testimony. But, as Schneider emphasizes, there are dangers to the reliance on experts, and careful thought must be given to defining and implementing such a tactic.

Indeed, Schneider's truly original and valuable contribution to the literature on domestic violence is her deft and thorough treatment of the tensions between feminist theory on the one hand and its actual practical implications for courtroom and social strategies on the other. Demonstrating the truth of the adage, "Watch out what you wish for because your wish may come true," she details several areas in which activists' successes at gaining recognition of battered women's claims for attention and redress have had mixed results for the women they are intending to help. Rather than simply offering a critique, Schneider describes the innovative attempts to improve policy based on battered women's experiences, providing useful examples for students of policy development and legal reform.

In the courtroom, one such example involves the use of testimony about the so-called "Battered Women Syndrome." Schneider's stimulating discussion of the confusion engendered by indiscriminate use of this term to describe women's experience of violence – with its shifting of blame away from the batterer and on to the victim – is enormously illuminating and should be mandatory reading for all who work on domestic violence cases. While Schneider strongly advocates use of expert testimony to put women's concrete experiences in a contextual framework, her account of the ways in which such evidence can be misused and misunderstood offers sober warning to lawyers that they must give careful attention both to the purposes for which expert testimony is offered and to the individual circumstances of the woman who is its focus.

A second area where feminist theory and practice can clash, to the detriment of a battered client, is in mounting a claim of self-defense for a woman who kills her abuser. According to Schneider, one of the most critical needs for law reform is to secure for battered women who kill a truly equal right to trial – which means the right to pursue a claim of self-defense, if appropriate. Yet the current emphasis of feminist theorists on portraying battered women as survivors rather than as victims, as agents who act purposefully within the context of a violent relationship rather than as the passive recipient of blows, presents real challenges when it comes to mounting a successful justification defense. (Schneider observes that in most states the statutory elements of "reasonableness," proportionality of force, temporal proximity of danger, and duty to retreat already stack the deck against battered women, who defend themselves in circumstances where these concepts have little relevance.) Judges and juries may have difficulty reconciling the view of a battered woman as the passive victim of "learned helplessness" – which is the common theme of "battered women syndrome" testimony – with the actual defendant before them who has killed her abuser. Indeed, as documented by Schneider, given the current gender-discriminatory legal standards defining "reasonableness," battered women's claims of self-defense are rarely successful.

Schneider emphasizes the importance of creating "an explicit framework of gender equality" as key to a comprehensive legal response to domestic violence. (197) While it is difficult to argue with her position, readers undoubtedly would benefit from a more fulsome and concrete description of what she would propose. The VAWA civil rights remedy, which provided civil damages for gender-motivated violence and framed the issue as one of discrimination, exemplifies an equality-based approach to domestic violence and sexual assault. Accordingly, Schneider's discussion of the VAWA civil rights remedy is particularly interesting, even though the text apparently went to print before the U.S. Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional in United States v. Morrison (2000).

Nevertheless, it is somewhat difficult to discern Schneider's views on the pre-Morrison decisions addressing VAWA civil rights remedy domestic violence claims. She argues both that those cases reflect judges' bias about domestic violence (193) and that they "show some hopeful signs." (194) Perhaps her description reflects the dearth of authority on the issue. The one case in which a court rejected a domestic violence claim as lacking evidence of gender-motivation, Dolin v. West, 22 F. Supp.2d 1343 (M.D. Fla. 1998), contained absolutely no allegations of gender-motivation and thus cannot fairly be construed as signaling a biased approach to domestic violence cases. Yet other courts' recognition that evidence such as gender-specific epithets, stereotypic comments, and sexual violence can reflect gender-motivation suggest that courts may be receptive to an equality framework, particularly when the case is appropriately pled.

One troubling aspect of Schneider's analysis of VAWA civil rights claims is her prediction that courts may treat cases alleging sexual assault more favorably than those based on claims of domestic violence. (193, 194) Yet, as her own review of the case law demonstrates, cases of domestic violence may themselves involve sexual assault, making the distinction between the two less clear-cut than her account would imply. And to the extent that she is concerned that bias may impede judges' ability to recognize gender-motivation in acts of domestic violence, lower court decisions assessing VAWA civil rights claims involving acquaintance rape indicate that bias may infuse consideration of sexual assault cases as well. For example, lower court decisions in the Morrison case (litigated under the case name Brzonkala v. Virginia Polytechnic) reasoned that date rape may be motivated by "misunderstanding," "a man's sexual passion," or "disrespect for the victim as a person, not as a woman [based on the] victim's personality." 935 F. Supp. 779, 785 (W.D. Va. 1996). If one goal of denominating domestic violence as discrimination is to situate it firmly within the broader context of gender equality, it is surprising that Schneider treats domestic violence and sexual assault as distinct problems, rather than as related actions on a continuum of gender-motivated aggression.

While creating an equality framework for domestic violence law reform is undoubtedly crucial, one wonders how Schneider squares the inherent tension between that approach and another of her key insights -- that reform must be informed, if not driven, by the voices of battered women. Paradoxically, battered women may seek criminal intervention and/or support in the form of social services, childcare, workplace policies or financial assistance, but they rarely frame their experience as a matter of discrimination. It would be illuminating to learn how Schneider views the intersection, and potential contradiction, between these two approaches.

The foregoing introduction to the critical issues Schneider takes up in her masterful analysis of intimate violence only hints at the complexity and richness of this book. By broadening our understanding of the problems of gender violence and its fundamental relationship to the wider spectrum of women's fight for equality, Schneider has pointed the way to a transformation of society's responses to battering and to the women and children who suffer from it. Indeed, one of her concrete suggestions – that government end its exclusive emphasis on the woman's leaving her abuser and provide instead the structures and services that will enable battered women to make their own choices about their lives – has already attracted one prominent standard-bearer. "Domestic violence victims," New York State Chief Judge Kaye told the New York legislature in announcing a new initiative creating specialized domestic violence courts, "often have an ongoing, intimate relationship with the batterer. They may be living together, raising children together. Effective justice requires us to do more than process each case fairly and efficiently."

This recognition that government has a responsibility to provide resources to battered women and their families marks a good beginning to the next stage of feminist lawmaking. As Schneider has persuasively established, however, until the promise of equality is made real for all women, and we end the "cultural complicity" (232) that has perpetuated attitudes condoning women's subordination to men, there will be little change in the disturbing incidence of gender-motivated violence in our society.

Julie Goldscheid was a Senior Staff Attorney at NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund where she litigated several cases, including United States v. Morrison (2000), in which women sought to enforce their rights under the VAWA civil rights remedy. She now serves as General Counsel of Safe Horizon, a leading victim assistance, advocacy, and violence prevention organization.

Mary McGowan Davis is a Visiting Attorney at NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund and a former New York City Criminal Court Judge and Acting Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.

Editors' Note: Ms. Goldsheid's previous contribution to Books-on-Law was a review of Nan Stein's Classrooms to Courtrooms (Teachers College Press, 1999). Books-on-Law's contributing editor, M.C. Sungaila, served as counsel of record in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of forty women's rights, civil rights, business, professional, bar and public service organizations who filed an amici curiae brief in support of Christy Brzonkala, Ms. Goldscheid's client in United States v. Morrison.

For a Books-on-Law review of related interest, see Nadine Taub's review of Criminology at the Crossroads: Feminist Readings in Crime and Justice (Oxford University Press, 1998), edited by Kathleen Daly & Lisa Maher.

Nine and Counting: The Women of the Senate
Barbara Mikulski, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Patty Murray, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Mary Landrieu, and Blanche L. Lincoln, with Catherine Whitney.
New York, NY: William Morrow, 2000 (cloth) / Harperperennial, 2001 (paper)
Cloth: $25.00 / Paper: $13.00
Pp. xvi, 238
ISBN: cloth 0060197676 / paper 0060957069

October, 2000: I'm sitting with my husband and a friend talking about the California Senate race. Republican Congressman Tom Campbell has mounted a halfhearted challenge to Democratic incumbent Dianne Feinstein. He has trailed in the polls from the get-go. The candidates – both pro-choice moderates – are hard to tell apart, and most voters have forgotten there's a Senate race going on. My friend says he's going to vote for Campbell because he supports free trade. I say I'm going to vote for Feinstein because her record on gun control is better. Even if it weren't, I add, I'd select the incumbent in a situation like this, because she's established her position on several critical committees. (During the last Congress, Feinstein served on the Committee on Appropriations, the Committee on the Judiciary, and the Committee on Rules and Administration.)

Then my husband pipes up. "When the candidates are so similar on the issues," he says, "I will always vote for the woman."

I'm quiet for a minute. Both my senators have been women since 1992. I had forgotten it was a problem.

But the title Nine and Counting: The Women of the Senate reminds us that it is. Last year, only California and Maine had two female senators. (Washington State has since joined them.) Five states had one woman and one man representing them in the Legislature's upper house; the remaining 43 states had two men.

Any boy in this great nation of ours can look around at this moment and know that it's possible for him to be president. (Any girl in this great nation of ours can look around at this moment and know that it's possible to be the president's wife, and then a member of the United States Senate.)
             —Anna Quindlen (Newsweek, December 18, 2000)

The women who wrote Nine and Counting can now count all the way to 13, with the election last year of Hillary Rodham Clinton (lately) of New York, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Jean Carnahan of Missouri, and, in a squeaker of a race, Maria Cantwell of Washington. Should we be satisfied with a Senate that is thirteen- percent women? With a forty-four percent increase in just one election? If fifty-two percent of the population is female, should fifty-two percent of the Senate be? Or is that an overly simplistic, bean-counting approach?

These are but a few of the interesting questions that Nine and Counting provokes – and fails to answer. The book is dedicated to the Girl Scout Organization. Unfortunately, it reads as if it was written for the Girl Scouts. Filled with platitudes like "The focus on problem-solving exercised daily by the women of the Senate is a living confirmation of the saying 'If you want something done, ask a woman,'" the book is facile and disappointingly vague. (178) In an omniscient voice (presumably Catherine Whitney's), it asserts that women bring a "unique perspective" to the legislature. (25) But it's unclear what that unique perspective really is, and when we do hear about it, unexamined stereotypes are presented as facts.

We hear that women are superior at building relationships, which makes them ideally suited to broker deals in the Senate. But as gender psychologists will tell you, such so-called sex differences are pretty marginal. Surely successful male senators are good at establishing relationships, too. We also hear that women don't have to emulate men to be good senators. And, paradoxically, that men and women are no different.

Such conflicting concepts are at the heart of feminist theory, and scholars spend careers pondering them. A 238-page book isn't going to resolve them. But our leading female policymakers could have given us a more thoughtful take.

This is a book without a point of view, except that it is good to have women in the Senate. Even that is unexplored. The book talks about the "exalted position of a United States senator," but never explains why it's important to have women in that position. (28) To me, it's simple. Since there are only 100 senators, as compared to 435 House members, each one has tremendous legislative power. Women should share in that power.

The book is anemic in part because it is written by nine individuals from both sides of the aisle, each with her own belief system. But the problem seems also to stem from that particular disease of politicians: fear of alienating anyone who might be a registered voter. The book is slickly packaged, from the Annie Leibovitz photograph on the cover to the anecdotes inside, clearly selected for maximum positive impact. Only Patty Murray seems to let down her guard a little, in a section where she describes her teenage daughter Sara's struggles to cope with a mom whose politics were so well-known.

Jim and I get up very early – about 6:00 a.m. We bathe and dress the children and feed them a wonderful breakfast. Then we put them in the freezer, leave for work, and when we come home, we defrost them. And we all have a lovely dinner together. They're great!
             —Former U.S. Congressional representative Pat Schroeder (87)

The most troubled part of Nine and Counting is the chapter entitled "Balancing Acts." The book heaps praise on the female senators, particularly those who are mothers, for, essentially, working outside the home. Granted, it's tiring to work full time and be a parent. But it's a rare privilege of the middle class to keep one parent out of the paid labor force. And a book written for the Boy Scouts wouldn't contain this chapter. (In its characteristic doublespeak, the book notes that a man running for Senate wouldn't be asked "Who'll take care of the children?" (182))

Only the two youngest female senators, Mary Landrieu and Blanche Lincoln, say that they share parenting duties equally with their husbands. And this concept seems lost on Whitney, who remarks that "with the elections of Mary Landrieu in 1996 and Blanche Lincoln in 1998, it's no longer unusual to come across preschoolers racing down the hallways of the Dirksen and Hart Senate office buildings." Don't male senators' kids ever visit Daddy at the office?

Then there's the matter of husbands. The book treats them as if they are candidates for sainthood, simply because they are not threatened by their high-powered wives. "There is one point that the married women senators can agree upon unanimously," Whitney writes. "[I]t takes a special man to be married to a political woman." (103) What's more disturbing is some of the senators' acceptance of gender inequality. "Lets face it," says Patty Murray. "No matter how supportive, your husband is not usually the one who remembers to pick up the toilet paper." (103) Dianne Feinstein describes how the public is suspicious of politicians' husbands: "People think nothing of it when a male politician walks into a room holding his wife's hand," she says. "In fact, they expect a show of solidarity from a political wife. But if I walk into a room holding my husband's hand, it's looked upon quite differently. People immediately wonder how much influence he has." (109) Rather than challenge the sexist system, however, Feinstein elects the politically expedient route. "I choose to campaign alone," she says. "That's okay with me. Historically, our role models have always been strong, solitary women. It's what is meant to be." (109)

Nine and Counting is not without merit. It's a quick, easy read, and it contains some enjoyable stories. We see Kay Bailey Hutchison, just out of law school and turned down by all the big firms because she's a woman, taking a job as a TV news reporter and becoming interested in politics. Dianne Feinstein, challenged on the Senate floor as unfamiliar with firearms by a male senator during the debate over the assault weapons bill, explains that she became mayor of San Francisco as the result of a double assassination, accidentally putting her fingers through a bullet hole in the wrist of one colleague as she was feeling for a pulse. (For some unfathomable reason, however, Whitney lauds Feinstein for not "giv[ing] over to despair" after the assassination. (60) Patty Murray, knocking on state legislators' doors because she's upset that funds for parent-child education have been cut, is told that she can't make a difference because she's "just a mom in tennis shoes." (41) She gets mad, goes home, organizes 15,000 parents, gets funding restored, and starts running for office. These and similar tales illuminate how these women have faced – and faced down – gender discrimination.

The book also reveals how the women of the Senate do, in fact, work together. In the best tradition of women's solidarity, they meet for dinner every few weeks to offer support and share stories. Barbara Mikulski runs a welcoming seminar for new female senators. And the women have reached across the aisle to enact a bill allowing homemakers to contribute to individual retirement accounts, restore cuts to Medicare, and pass a resolution calling for federal standards that recommend mammograms for women in their forties.

Finally, Nine and Counting provides a good sense of history. It demonstrates how far women have come since the first female senator, Rebecca Latimer Felton, was seated in 1922. (Georgia's governor appointed the eighty-seven-year-old Felton to finish out the term of a deceased senator, but the Senate was already out of session. As a courtesy, the new senator-elect allowed her to take his seat – for one day. She took the opportunity to make an impassioned speech about how women would serve with distinction in the future.) It was only nine years ago that women in the Senate were an anomaly; there had never been more than two at a time. Today, Susan Collins is mentioned as one of the moderates likely to lead this Senate, which is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans.

Soon, perhaps, we won't need a book like this. We're fast approaching the point at which female candidates for the Senate are seen primarily as candidates, not as females. But I think I was a little hasty, last October, to forget that women are under-represented. Women do bring something different to the table. Perhaps it's a more personal perspective on issues like abortion, rape, or women's health. Perhaps it's the knowledge that power can be shared, rather than wielded. It's unfortunate that Nine and Counting doesn't do a better job of showing us. But maybe we're only going to truly understand when we have more than 13 to count.

Kathy Zonana has a J.D. from Stanford Law School and is an inactive member of the State Bar of California. She is associate editor of Stanford magazine.

Editors' Note: For a Books-on-Law review of related interest, see Irene Stewart's review of Beth Reingold's Representing Women: Sex, Gender, and Legislative Behavior in Arizona and California.

Global Critical Race Feminism: An International Reader
Adrien Katherine Wing, editor
New York, NY: New York University Press, 2000
Cloth: $70.00
Pp. 432
ISBN: 0814793371

Don't Judge a Book by Its Title

"Lovely waistcoat. Pity about the poetry," says William Shakespeare about his rival Christopher Marlowe in Tom Stoppard's Shakespeare in Love. One might let fly a similar, if inverted barb applicable to Global Critical Race Feminism, edited by Adrien Wing: "Lovely book. Pity about the title."

Global Critical Race Feminism is a strong collection of essays on an important set of topics. For scholars interested in issues of race, class, gender and/or postcolonialism, the volume is an excellent resource, full of insight, intellectual seriousness, and surprising ethnography. These essays were passionately and carefully written and thoughtfully collected. So, it is a pity that Wing (or the publishers) chose a title that is almost a cliché. If one went to the "Social Criticism" section of any good bookstore any time within the last ten years, entered every title into a computer and ran the results through a randomizing program, the first four words to pop out would probably be "global," "critical," "race," and "feminism." The potential reader, with limited time and limited funds, might assume that this volume is the academic press equivalent of a Greatest Hits of the 80s and 90s collection. Worse yet, the potential reader might mistake this volume for an identity-politics polemic targeted to a race- and gender-specific audience – women of color; all others need not apply.

That would be a pity. As a collection of pieces organized loosely around themes, the book is well organized and rewarding. Wing's introductory summary of the anthology and her organizing framework are sharp and helpful. The book is broken down into six parts dealing with: (Racial or Ethnic Minority) Responses to Feminism; Third World Within the First (This part deals with the problems faced by immigrant and postcolonial women.); Pathbreakers and Founding Mothers (A highlight here is a fascinating chapter on Josephine Baker's political activism); Human Rights and Cultural and Religious Difference; Violence Against Women; and Women in the Global Marketplace.

The essays in each section cohere thematically, and each section orbits around a more general set of themes in left social critique: identity, marginality, subordination and resistance, globalization and, of course, law. Someone who is interested in one theme of the book is likely to be interested in and usefully informed by at least several of the others. So, judged as a collection of essays on law, identity, women's studies, and globalization, Global Critical Race Feminism (GCRF) is an excellent and welcome contribution. Despite the name, GCRF comes off smelling sweet as roses.

Deconstructing the Word "Global"

And this is precisely why the name is such a pity. One should not judge a book by its cover, or its name. But a title does create a set of expectations, good and bad. And the title suggests a certain confidence in the portability of Western identity politics that the volume itself, thankfully, does not reflect. Wing spends a good part of her introduction defending the theoretical premise of a (Politics? Movement? Genre of scholarship?) called "Global Critical Race Feminism." She begins: "each word represents one of the primary legal traditions from which it derives – Critical Legal Studies, Critical Race Theory and feminist jurisprudence. The word 'global' added to the title of this collection implies the embrace of strands from international and comparative law, global feminism, and post-colonial theory as well."

If the idea here was a simple taxonomy of legal scholarship, one might complain that the essays contained in the volume are already reasonably well described by the genres that Wing tells us make up GCRF. For instance, nothing in the Critical Race Theory genre excludes feminist or international perspectives – indeed, some of the most important scholarship in the field is explicitly feminist – and racial discourse is a central theme in much post-colonial scholarship. To be sure, a distinction can be made between, say, Critical Race Theory that focuses on international issues and that which does not do so. But as a matter of describing a field of scholarly endeavor, it may not be useful to make it.

Still, more is at stake than simple taxonomy. The term "global," for instance, has ideological stakes. It is not synonymous with "transnational" or "international." Indeed, in some contexts (the context of the "global economy" or of "global feminism" to which Wing refers, for example) "global" has the opposite connotation of "international, the latter term insisting on context and the irreducibility of difference and the former implying a totalization or transcendence. When one speaks of the "global economy," one is incorporating by reference an argument against the idea that national economies are relatively autonomous of each other and only understood in national context. One is implicitly arguing for the idea of an integrated, single economy that, to some extent, transcends national differences, such that we can say something in general about the global economy that applies everywhere. Similarly, global feminism implies a commitment to the idea that gender identity is constructed by a global discourse and set of practices and, therefore, gender issues are to a significant extent the same everywhere. The idea of gender hierarchy underlying "global feminism" is total. Viewed through this lens, the practice of photographing wartime rapes in the former Yugoslavia is structurally (but not necessarily morally) identical to "Debbie Does Dallas;" both are pornography that functions to produce the female gender as a subordinate identity.

"Women of Color" As an Organizing Principle

The title GCRF implies that the identities of race and gender are global, that they mean the same thing regardless of national context. Wing is aware of these stakes when she asks "what about the validity of the term 'women of color' as an organizing principle? The concept goes beyond mere color or racial identification. What all these women may have in common is their potential political relationship – likely an oppositional one – to sexist, racist and imperialist structures."

But, despite the stylistic caveats and qualification, Wing needs this statement to be unequivocal. In order for the term "women of color" to go "beyond mere color or racial identification," it is insufficient that the people it describes may have something else in common – they must have something else in common. Yet, can anyone have an oppositional political relationship (just one, potential or actual) to racist, sexist, and imperialist structures (multiple – at least three)? Doesn't any one person have a host of relationships to a host of practices that they confront? And wouldn't a diverse group of people have a host of different relationships (some oppositional, some complicit, some ambivalent) to a multitude of practices that acquire mea