Alice H. Eagly

Ok, Mr. Castellanos, this review is for you. I will start off with a great big, "Bite Me!" (Brought to you on behalf of Rachel Maddow and professional U.S. women).

This book is one for a university course, but it sooooo tremendously dispels Mr. Castellanos's arguments towards Rachel Maddow on Meet the Press (see: Huffington Post ), that I HAD to post a review.

On the show, Mr. (Asshole) Castellanos made the argument that women earn less because they work at their profession less hours per week compared to men. This is true. The reason: women are STILL primarily responsible for child rearing and housekeeping despite the fact that men do contribute more to such duties than in the past. Men can and do put in the extra hours needed to succeed because most upper-level professional men have stay-at-home wives who take on the home responsibilities. Upper-level professional women do not, typically, have stay-at-home husbands, and a woman's role remains primarily responsible for the cooking, cleaning, nursing, laundry, etc., even if that means arranging for outside help to assist in the completion of these duties (Hello? Men? You all can't clean a toilet?). If you are middle class or below, both partners are working with the woman still primarily responsible. In other words, men's careers are not derailed by family obligations, women's careers are derailed. (Oh, and by the way, when you look at a combination of paid professional and unpaid domestic hours of work per week, women work more hours than men.)

Now, there are other factors that impede women's progress and the book makes these factors clear. It all comes down to the fact that there remains discrimination against women in business (both in hiring and promotions), although it would probably be better categorized, according to the authors, as prejudice since gender stereotypes are automatically assumed (we all carry stereotypes...it's part of humans making sense of their world through categorization). The authors revealed their findings through a meta-analysis, or taking the results of various studies and identifying patterns in conclusions. Men are not better natural leaders, although that is a stereotype we carry. Women are just as capable, but we consider women nurturers, not leaders. Long-standing business culture is tough to crack open in order to expose it to change.

Now, there is a nuanced argument that I wish to make. According to the authors, more women opt out of corporate business to start their own businesses, allowing women to structure the type of work life they need, which fosters family time and gives them access to success. So, I want to know if the Republican party is willing to admit that WOMEN are the job creators? That's right. Job creation is not the result of tax cuts for billionaire men and their corporations. Me thinks the Rethuglican Party (not be confused with reasonable Progressive Republicans) had better rethink their stance on birth control, abortion services, and bible-thumping about appropriate roles for women. You are going to alienate a strong voting base.

The book is not perfect. They define gender only as the binaries of male and female. The meta-analysis also does not discuss work hours in relation to family life of same-sex partners and/or professional barriers they encounter. Still, it was enough for me to flip Mr. Castellanos the bird, and that is satisfying enough for me.… (meer)

Eagly and Chaiken state that they do not promote a single theoretical perspective and this claim underlies the most compelling strength of their book. Social psychologists agree that the study of attitudes has long been a staple in the field. For all this research, however, few works exist that successfully tie together all of the sometimes paradoxical findings. Through careful and scholarly guidance, Eagly and Chaiken illuminate the unifying themes that move attitudes out of the realm of circular definitions and into the realm of precise understanding. From this work the reader will gain an appreciation of the complexity of defining "attitudes," a working knowledge of the sometimes elaborate research paradigms that are used, an understanding of the importance of "attitudes" as a research construct, and a glimpse into the theoretical perspectives that have helped to shape social psychology as a science. For all these reasons, this work is a must for all college and university libraries and an invaluable supplemental resource for all social psychology courses. Undergraduate through faculty. .… (meer)