Corporate Personnel Protection Developing and Executing an Effective Program Within a Busine... Book

I adored this book, especially since the authors included a caveat at the beginning which attempted to neutralize any overly-vehement or one-sided arguments, "...we ... cringe a little at what read now like overstatements and overly militant ways of stating things." From what I've read of Ehrenreich's work, I wonder if more of her books wouldn't be better-served to have this type of warning in the introduction.

Nevertheless, I was able to overlook what I thought were glaring omissions. For example, the 1910 Flexner report, which revolutionized American medical education at a time when anyone could set up a medical practice or even a school, was surely as the authors contend a devastating influence on blacks and women. Not allowed into the more prestigious schools, those who were black and female and sought a medical career found their schools were almost universally forced to close after the report revealed their education to be sub-standard. And it's undoubtedly true, as the authors claim, that "Flexner and the foundation had no intention of making such training available" to anyone except the wealthy white men who attended the schools which received grants from the Carnegie Corporation by whom Flexner was employed. However, a few sentences about what were assuredly the multitudes of dangerous faith healers, quacks, and other people practicing medicine at the time would have given their argument more credence by making it obvious that the authors were more aware of the complex social environment of the time.

It was interesting to note that in Europe, the extensive witch hunts were often targeted at lay healers, usually women, and in this way much of our ancestral herbal knowledge was destroyed. As the authors state so well, "It was witches who developed an extensive understanding of bones and muscles, herbs and drugs, while physicians were still deriving their prognoses from astrology and alchemists were trying to turn lead into gold."

The issue of lay healing by women and ultimately midwifery being driven to extinction in America is served especially well. The precedent in Europe for the Church having many motives for ousting lay healers culminates in America, where midwifery, "the last holdout of peoples' medicine," was nearly destroyed: "Midwives were ridiculed as 'hopelessly dirty, ignorant, and incompetent.' Specifically, they were held responsible for the prevalence of puerperal sepsis (uterine infections) and neonatal ophthalmia (blindness due to parental infection with gonorrhea). Both conditions were easily preventable by techniques well within the grasp of the least literate midwife (hand-washing for puerperal sepsis, and eye drops for the ophthalmia.) So the obvious solution for a truly public-spirited obstetrical profession would have been to make the appropriate preventive techniques known and available to the mass of midwives." This is in fact what happened in England, Germany, and most other European nations: Midwifery was upgraded through training to become an established, independent occupation." This rings so true, it is difficult to debate. Especially since just this positive scenario occurred with the midwives on the Farm in Tennessee with the obstetricians who educated and supplied them, contributing to excellent fetal outcomes.

The authors claim midwifery was driven out for the purposes of money; 50% of births attended by midwives in 1910, the authors claim, "was an intolerable situation to the newly emerging obstetrical specialty." I am tired of this claim - for all that I am saddened by the history of midwifery, I don't believe obstetricians to be, on a personal level, evil, and I resent the implication that individuals in healing professions can make such selfish decisions so consistently. Maybe I'm an idealist, and maybe I'm incorrect in assuming that obstetrics is a healing profession, but I would hate to be proven wrong. Further research is clearly necessary on my part.

I especially appreciated the discussion of class as it related to the hospitalization of childbirth. It seems complicated and is not clearly outlined, but touched on throughout the book, so I'd also like to read more about that.

The book does highlight some significant problems I have with second-wave feminism, that is as I understand it the feminism that characterizes "home-making" as a trap for women who should instead be out building careers and keeping up with men. I'm totally in support of that if that's what a woman chooses to do, but in their haste to be free from home and children, second-wave feminists seem to have forgotten or never realized that the beneficiaries of the freedom that they so valiantly won for us might choose, perhaps ignorant of that history, a life of domesticity, and be quite content with it -- while also self-identifying as feminists.

As they write, "...feminists of the late-nineteenth century were themselves beginning to celebrate the nurse/mother image of femininity. The American women's movement had given up the struggle for full sexual equality to focus exclusively on the vote, and to get it, they were ready to adopt the most sexist tenets of Victorian ideology: Women needed the vote, they argued, not because they are human, but because they are Mothers. 'Woman is the mother of the race,' gushed Boston feminist Julia War Howe, 'the guardian of its helpless infancy, its earliest teacher, its most zealous champion. Woman is also the homemaker, upon her devolve the details which bless and beautify family life.' And so on in paeans too painful to quote."

While I can see that, in an era when homemaking is the only acceptable life for a woman, or only alongside a similar occupation such as nursing or teaching, that could be a nauseating tract to read. However, in my life, free to choose what I wish, I actually find it touching. It does, however, highlight a continued controversy in my mind. Men are clearly capable of being the "mother of the race," as defined above, but clearly birth and breastfeeding imply more involvement of the mother in the early life of the child. Where do we draw the distinction between biologically-determined gender roles and those that are imposed only by our culture? It's a very important question, and I think it can only be resolved on a personal level.

I think some of that dilemma is, perhaps unconsciously, addressed later amidst a wildly controversial discussion of the role of the nurse as it developed in the twentieth century. "Healing, in its fullest sense, consists of both curing and caring, doctoring and nursing. The old lay healers of an earlier time had combined both functions, and were valued for both. (For examples [sic], midwives not only presided at the delivery, but lived in until the new mother was ready to resume care of her children.) But with the development of scientific medicine, and the modern medical profession, the two functions were split irrevocably. Curing became the exclusive province of the doctor; caring was relegated to the nurse." The split of the role of healer into superior "curer" (doctor) and subordinate "carer" (nurse) mimics the split into gender roles that our society pushes us, aided by our biology. To become whole, to become the healer, carer and curer in all, is similar to becoming a whole person despite gender roles. (As an aside, while I do see some glimmers of truth in their discussion of the history of nursing as a history of women's oppression, I think it deserves a far more nuanced discussion than they gave it.)

Lastly, I found this tidbit in their conclusion to be worth remembering: "There is no historically consistent justification for the exclusion of women from healing roles. Witches were attacked [in Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries] for being pragmatic, empirical, and immoral. But in the nineteenth century the rhetoric reversed: women became too unscientific, delicate, and sentimental. The stereotypes change to suit male convenience -- we don't, and there is nothing in our "innate feminine nature" to justify our present subservience."

All in all, I find that what the authors state, somewhat apologetically, in the new introduction, to be true: "If some of the sources of our anger now seem quaint, this is only because of works like WMN [Witches, Midwives, and Nurses] and the movement it came out of. No matter how I take issue with their bias, I have to affirm that women who charged forth with such bias blazed the way for women like me. I am thankful, but I hope that the polarization of public opinion that such radicals have fueled has not done more harm than good.