cover image Educated in Romance: Women, Achievement, and College Culture

Educated in Romance: Women, Achievement, and College Culture

Dorothy Holland, R. W. Connell. University of Chicago Press, $32 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-226-34943-5

The degree to which women acquiesce to social structures based on male privilege is the subject of this 10-year study. Centering on two Southern universities in the 1980s--one predominantly black, the other white--the authors, both anthropologists, followed academically gifted college women with high career goals through their studies and beyond. Their research revealed a pattern: their subjects scaled down aspirations for careeers in order to marry, often accepting positions economically inferior to those of their husbands. The peer group was found to emphasize feminine attractiveness, subjecting women to ``a sexual auction block'' and allowing little time for, or profound interest in, the educational process. The authors' well-documented anthropological and sociological analyses contribute to the literature on gender relations. Holland teaches at the University of North Carolina, Eisenhart at the University of Colorado. (Oct.)