letters, and text messages all in an attempt maintain their emotional role in the family. Furthermore, the effort that they put toward arranging care for their children illustrates their deep concern and commit-ment to their families. If a family care arrangecommit-ment was not viable, or if a preselected arrangement fell through, they would feel compelled to return home, or else try to bring their children to live with them in their country of immigration. The well-being of the children is always at their central focus.
Fathers who remain home while their wives go abroad to provide financial support to the family may actually endure a loss of self-respect and dignity. This reflects poorly on men because they are perceived to be unable to provide for their families or incapable of satisfying their wives sexually. Although some men are quite secure in their masculinity, others (at the risk of appearing feminized) cast off any responsibilities of doing housework or child care to other relatives or paid workers.
Misty Curreli See also Caregiving; Domestic Labor; Economy: History of
Women’s Participation; Emotion Work; Feminization of Labor; Immigrant Households and Gender Dynamics
Further Readings
Ehrenreich, B., & Hochschild, A. R. (Eds.). (2003). Global woman: Nannies, maids, and sex workers in the new economy.New York: Owl Books, Henry Holt.
Hochschild, A. R. (2000). The nanny chain: Mothers minding other mothers’ children. American Prospect, 11(4). Retrieved November 22, 2005, from LexisNexis Academic.
Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. (2001). Domestica: Immigrant workers cleaning and caring in the shadows of affluence.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hondagneu-Sotelo, P., & Ernestine, A. (1997). “I’m here, but I’m there”: The meanings of Latina transnational motherhood. Gender & Society. Retrieved April 13, 2006, from JSTOR.
Parreñas, R. S. (2001). Servants of globalization: Women, migration, and domestic work.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Parreñas, R. S. (2005). Children of global migration: Transnational families and gendered woes.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Zimmerman, M. K., Litt, J. S., & Bose, C. E. (2006). Global dimensions of gender and carework.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
G
OLDMAN
, E
MMA
(1869–1940)
Also known as “Red Emma,” Emma Goldman is much more than an anarchist who protested against the imperialist capitalism as a feminist lecturing on issues ranging from birth control to jealousy. An energetic lecturer rather than a reticent theoretician, Goldman spoke to the masses to challenge the prevail-ing ideas on marriage, free love, prostitution, and homosexuals.
At a time when the main target of bourgeois femi-nists was the right to vote, Goldman took revolution-ary steps to transgress the narrow political boundaries and seek women’s liberation within a wider arena. Against all governments, Goldman thought the vote would only mean improving a system that fosters the tools of victimization for women. Thus, she often attacked women professionals and suffragists both in her lectures and articles she wrote as the editor of the monthly journal Mother Earth. Her critique of the mainstream feminists can also be observed in her comparison of the educated women to the working-class girls whom she deemed less tainted by the suffo-cating social roles.
For Goldman, women’s liberation begins in one’s soul and only the liberated individuals can eradicate bourgeois values from their roots. To this end, Goldman showcased Nora of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House,a model who closed the door of her cage for freedom. Goldman’s lecture “Marriage and Love” describes marriage as an insurance policy for women who practice dependence on men. Prisoners at its best, married women are sex objects sold like a piece of meat. In “Traffic in Women,” she concludes that if poverty tempts women into prostitution, then wives are prostitutes. Physical beauty is the only asset women are allowed to put on the market, so they see each other as rivals to further imprison themselves. Critical of bourgeois marriage, Goldman supported free love and the necessity of birth control. For her, motherhood was to remain a matter of free choice. The authorities of the time found such claims too bold, and short arrests following the special birth con-trol issue of Mother Earth led to a final deportation from the United States to Russia, where she came from in 1886.
Her life is an emblem of the values she fervently supported; Goldman apparently enjoyed the capacity
to create a new life out of practically nothing. Unlike most mainstream Communists of her era, Goldman believed that beautiful things are necessities, not luxu-ries. Her response to the disapproving comrades, “If I can’t dance, it isn’t my revolution!” became a motto. Her autobiography Living My Life, Martin Duberman’s play Mother Earth, E. L. Doctorow’s novel Ragtime, and Warren Beatty’s film Reds are the key sources to explore a life started in Lithuania as a middle-class member and ended in Toronto as a world citizen.
Mine Özyurt Kιlιç See also Contraception; Motherhood; Suffrage Movement
Further Readings
Beatty, W. (Director). (1981). Reds [Motion picture]. Hollywood, CA: Paramount.
Doctorow, E. L. (1975). Ragtime. New York: Random House. Duberman, M. B. (1991). Mother Earth: An epic drama of
Emma Goldman’s life.New York: St. Martin’s Press. Falk, C. (1984). Love, anarchy and Emma Goldman: A
biography.New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Goldman, E. (1970). Living my life. New York: Dover. Shulman, A. K. (Ed.). (1983). Red Emma speaks: An Emma
Goldman reader.New York: Schocken Books.
G
YNECOLOGY
Gynecology is a surgical medical specialty that grew out of the practices of obstetrics and midwifery in the mid-19th century. Practitioners usually also practice obstetrics—hence, the specialty is more commonly referred to as “obstetrics and gynecology” and practi-tioners are more commonly referred to as “obstetrician-gynecologists” (ob-gyns). Although some scholars have defined gynecology as the study of women in terms of their functions and diseases, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) defines gyne-cology as care related to pregnancy and women’s repro-ductive organs. In addition, ACOG defines ob-gyns responsibilities to include providing general care to women. It is difficult to make a clear distinction between obstetrics and gynecology because both deal with similar concerns in women’s health. However, only obstetricians provide medical care dealing with preg-nancy and delivery. Although all obstetricians provide gynecological care, gynecologists do not necessarily
provide obstetrical care. ACOG further identifies four subspecialty areas within obstetrics and gynecology: gynecologic oncology (focusing on cancers of the reproductive system), maternal-fetal medicine (focusing on the care of a pregnant woman and her fetus both before and after birth), reproductive endocrinology and infertility (focusing on hormonal or infertility prob-lems), and urogynecology and pelvic reconstructive surgery (focusing on disorders of the genitourinary system). This entry discusses the background, feminist criticisms, and the current state of gynecology.
Historical Background
In the United States, gynecology did not come into being as a medical specialty until the mid-1800s. The man widely acknowledged as the “father of American gyne-cology” is J. Marion Sims, the founder of the Woman’s Hospital of the State of New York. Before the mid-1800s, women’s health was primarily under the purview of women midwives, who attended a large proportion of births. At that time, pregnancy and childbirth—not to mention the workings of the reproductive system—were not well understood by anyone. Furthermore, concerns about modesty also made it difficult for men to attend to women during childbirths. In effect, female midwives held a monopoly on attending pregnancy and childbirth because there was little competition.
After 1750, American men began to return from Europe, having obtained medical education there. At the same time, they brought back new knowledge about childbirth and innovations in birthing equip-ment. These male physicians became known as “man-midwives” to distinguish them from the traditional, female midwife, and there soon existed a division of labor where women midwives attended to pregnancies and births, but called upon man-midwives during emergencies. The foundation was being laid for a new understanding of pregnancy and childbirth—one that eventually privileged man-midwives (later to become ob-gyns) over female midwives.
Beginning around 1810, physicians began to con-solidate their domination of the market in pregnancy and childbirth. They primarily did so by making the case that they were the only ones with sufficient scien-tific knowledge and expertise to be birth attendants—a strategy that ultimately proved successful. In addition, male-midwives began to organize as a profession and further bolstered their professional status and authority by diminishing the image of the female midwife, using 398———Gynecology
