Women in Anthropology

'One is filled with admiration for the determination and hard work that enabled these women to become professional anthropologists in the face of overwhelming odds. And one cannot help but be drawn into a review of his or her own pilgrimage to the doctorate. Schweitzer provides an evocative context for these memories in her chapter, recounting those aspects of U.S. history that shaped the lives and the education of women in recent decades...The reader cannot help but be engaged and informed by this newest collection of essays dealing with women\'s careers in anthropology. These remarkable anthropologists and their achievements place older, but not yet aged, women within the cross-cultural context of the nonindustrial world, where the middle-aged woman is typically \'in her prime\.' American Anthropologist 'Collectively, these 17 narratives illustrate how anthropology itself is a cultural construction, shaped historically and in the present by larger configurations of gender, race and class that embrace some minds and bodies while leaving others to forge their own paths. Born between 1913 and 1947, many of the scholars represented here took the fast track from high school to college to the status of well-educated young wives and mothers. Time passed productively, yet, as one author explains, ""When Betty Freidan wrote about the 'trapped housewife,' I recognized myself."" Guided less by institutional mentors than by the idea of anthropology as an intellectual pursuit and practice, they enrolled in doctoral programs where some professors wondered aloud about the length and productivity of a mature student's career. Turning ageism on its head, these researchers describe the strength and flexibility of working as older women in the field. They also bring unique, diachronic insights to the development of anthropological theory, which some studied first as undergraduates in the 1940s and 1950s.' Maria D. Vesperi, New College of Florida