Beyond the Public/Domestic Dichotomy : Contemporary Perspectives on Women's Public Lives

The eight essays in this volume explore the public, or extra-domestic, lives of women, examining the connections between their activities in the public and private domains. The purpose underlying this theme is twofold: first, to counteract the common tendency to ignore the influence of women outside of the home, and second, to test some generalizations about women's status and social roles which have developed from feminist scholarship. Taking as a starting point the model of cultural anthropologist Michelle Z. Rosaldo, which suggests that asymmetry between the roles of men and women stems not from biology but from social custom, the contributors go on to discuss and question various aspects of this theory.