In The Name of the Poor: Contesting Political Space for Poverty Reduction Book

What I loved about this collections of essays about the role of women is the acknowledgement of the struggles of previous generations and how women dealt with those difficulties. There are a multitude of female role models in this book, ones that I was familiar with and ones I wasn't. Reading their accomplishments made me feel that I should do more to learn about the legacies of my foremothers. Also, this helped me to recognize that the fight for equal recognition is far from over. Men who keep women down because "it's their place" or because "women can't do something" are only doing a disservice to society. I only hope that my children and grandchildren will someday grow up in a world where people are judged by their abilities and not their gender.

As for comments that this book seems to endorse that women can have everything and that the assertion isn't true, I think these commenters didn't get the full message. Roberts does have a great career and a family, but she acknowledges the difficult choices she and her husband have both had to make, the need for help that they had in raising their children. She also talks about how tough it is. Women can have it all if they recognize the having it all may mean that they have to make small compromises in order to do what makes them happy and raise a family and that it made me a difficult, but fufilling road.

That opinion also ignores what Roberts ends the book wiith: women do a great job of tearing each other down. Instead of doing so, they should acknowledge that there is no one right way to "have it all." The woman who decides she should be a stay-at-home mother has made just as valid of a choice as the woman who hires a nanny so she can work or the woman who doesn't want children.

I highly recommend this book to all women.