Listen! Women Speaking

The importance of what women can tell us is beginning to be recognized by men as well as women, by policymakers as well as investigators, not just of history, but of psychology, economics, literature, and many other fields. Learning about the lives of women can provide an invaluable re-creation of our collective past, and provide meaningful ways to cope with our present and our future. It is necessary for us as students, researchers and writers, specialists and generalists, to talk with women, who have a great deal to tell us. Women can tell us what they have been telling each other for generations. They can tell us what male investigators over the centuries have rarely thought to ask about. They can tell us what it is like to be a Chicana, or a Black, or a Native American, or an immigrant, or a WASP. They can tell us what it was like to grow up female and how they have been affected by the customs that influence femininity. They can describe what it is like to have a baby--or to help deliver another's; how they coped with dirt and disease before the advent of plumbing and penicillin. They can narrate the good times--parties and courtship, creation and recreation. And they can relive the bad: abortions, beatings, rapes, running away, child abuse, alcoholism. Their narratives on any of these topics can provide first hand information which enriches the study of nearly any of the humanities or social sciences. Women can tell their interviewer of role in relationships: what it is like to be a mother, or a mother-in-law; a mistress, or a wife, or widow. Women can discuss the dimensions of their friendships with women1 and with other men. Women can explore what it is like to do women's work--as a maid, waitress, supermarket checker, secretary, teacher, or nurse. Or women may have done men's work--as a farmer, assembly-line worker, taxi or truck driver, or a business executive. Or they may have been creators--of art, literature, dance, or drama. They can tell us, as they told Studs Terkel in Working,2 about the monotony, exhaustion, challenge--and discrimination-in their work

Media Studies and Communication · Psychology · Rhetoric and Communication Studies