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Beyond Her Sphere: Women and the Professions in American History (Contributions in Women's Studies)

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Barbara Harris' "Beyond Her Sphere" is an absolute MUST reading for anyone interested in feminism, women's history, or just plain curious to know why certain demeaning, derogatory, and dominating ideas STILL exist about women. This book is an excellent reference source for all educators of all grades who wish to include background or specific discussion of women in their classrooms. Harris begins her analysis of male domination and definition of women with Paul and the New Testament and explains how early Christian patristic writers combined Paul's philosophies with Aristoltelian ones to form an extreme mysogynistic view of women that defined them as evil, disruptive, and in need of male domination. Her analysis continues to explain how the Renaissance, Protestantism, and the Enlightenment created more egalitarian attitudes and understandings of women which were reversed in the seventeenth century to place women back in their domestic sphere as wives and mothers "where they belonged". Harris' analysis concludes with a discussion of first wave feminism, Sufferage, the World Wars, and Second Wave Feminism. This book is not just a list of what happened when, but also an explanation of WHY attitudes shifted and changed and who benifitted in what way because of the adjustments in thinking about women. In 200 pages of reading, a reader can gain a panoramic and complete understanding of ideas and philosophies that have defined and controlled women that contribute to residual beliefs about women to this day.