Justice and power in sociolegal studies Book

While some of the statistics are out of date (the book is from a speech 17 years ago), the general thesis hasn't changed that much: that for all practical purposes, women are kept out of the rooms where real decision-making occurs, and there are a lot of sociological factors to show how this occurs.

Chittister, a Benedictine nun, discusses this in the context of social development programs (where things most often get done FOR women rather than BY them) and relates it all to Job's confrontation with God and the friends who tried to theologize his pains as reflective of his spiritual state.

Chittister states her thesis thusly: "...there is operating among us a false sense of power which holds women in captivity and the planet in jeopardy. Unless and until both church and state deal with the theology of power that now exists, the social system as we know it will simply continue to deteriorate, with women as its most basic but not its solitary victims." (pages 1-2). Chittister uses Rollo May's typology of five kinds of power--exploitative, competitive, manipulative, nurturant, and integrative--to discuss power in women's lives and possibilities for change.

By the end of this short (77-page) book I was recalling the lives of women I had known, places where I had been affected by and complicit in the power games that deny women true equality in the eyes of humanity (NOT in the eyes of God, as Chittister uses the example of Job's daughters to illustrate several times), and thinking about local places to use my skills to change the situation that exists. This book might be most aptly described as a sermon on paper -- its purpose is not so much academic illustration as a call to action, and in that I think it succeeds.