Dubois and Ruiz' "Unequal Sisters"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that Dubois and Ruiz in their book "Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women's History', which is a compilation of a multiplicity of perspectives of feminist historians of a variety of periods, ethnic groups and racial groups, attempt to ameliorate some of the past oversights of the women's rights movement that denied the equally important components of race and ethnicity in defining many women's lives. The author points out that, for women of color, their struggle to make peace with themselves and with their American identities cannot be fully subsumed into the traditional feminist categories of gender or race. The paper relates that this collection of essays instead argues for a relational understanding of the nature of race and gender, which means that each person is composed of categories, such as male/female, Anglo/Latino, that gain meaning only in the inter-relationship of these categories.

From the Paper:

"The essays include a number of ethnic groups, including African-American, Latina-American, Chicanas, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans in their subject matter. Early on, it becomes clear that the lives of black women in particular were written out the second-wave feminist debate. While many white feminists of the 1960s and 1970s such as Betty Friedan (1963) defined their feminism as an ideology that gave them the intellectual justification to seek work outside the home, most Black women have always worked, either as slaves, as noted by Deborah Gray White's essay on "Female Slaves: Sex Roles and Status in the Antebellum South" and Jeanne Boydston's "To Earn her Daily Bread"."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Dubois, Ellen Carol & Vicki Ruiz. (Editor) Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women's History. New York: Routledge, 1994.
• Friedan, Betty. The Feminist Mystique. First published 1963. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2001.

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