Women in the Material World

The lives of women in 20 diverse countries are spotlighted in this beautiful and moving photo-essay, an offshoot of Menzel's Material World: A Global Family Portrait. In Russia, Zhanna Kapsalova, still recovering from the Christmastime 1993 murder of her husband, shuttles frantically between two teaching jobs. In Ethiopia, Zenebu Tulu, who was kidnapped into marriage by her future husband, explains that having regular, unwanted pregnancies is an unavoidable fact of life, and she resourcefully makes the best of her situation. In Albania, Hanke Cakoni bathes her severely disabled seven-year-old son, then makes lunch before her three other children return from school, while the family's goats wander through the house. ""In our country women are treated as one step beneath men,"" she says, a sentiment often echoed in the interviews with women in China, Italy, India, Japan, the U.S., Jordan, Israel, Mali, South Africa, Mongolia, Thailand, Bhutan, Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti and Guatemala. A unique, revealing, multicultural celebration of women's invisible role in societies around the world. (Sept.) FYI: D'Aluisio, a former TV news producer in Houston (now living in California), and Menzel, a photographer for Life and Smithsonian, led a team of female photojournalists and interpreters to compile the interviews and 375 color photos.