The XX factor
Subtitle: how the rise of working women has created a far less equal world
By: Alison Wolf
Publisher: Allen Lane
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Toronto
Language: eng
Number of pages: 393
ISBN-13: 9780670064779
Subjects: Women; Employment; History; Women employees; Women executives; Women in the professions; Work-life balance; Work and family
Description: "For most of history, being female defined the limits of a woman's achievements. But now women can be successful careerists equal to men. In Norway, women legally must constitute a third of all boards; in the U.S.A., women have gone from being 3 percent of practising lawyers in 1970 to 40 percent today, and over half of all law students are female. Currently, more than seventy million educated women throughout the world work alongside men. Many delay marriage and children, and some forego them entirely. Yet professional women remain a minority. These changes are revolutionary but not universal--the "sisterhood" of working women is deeply divided. Young, educated, full-time professional women, who have put children on hold, are making enormous strides in the workplace. But for a second group of women, this is unattainable; instead, they work part-time, earn less, are concentrated in heavily feminized occupations such as cleaning, and gain income and self-worth from having children at a young age. Sisterhood is gone. The new female elite, the top 10 percent, lead lives completely different from all previous women in history or from other women today. As these two groups move ever further apart, shared gender no longer automatically means shared interests. Rather, for the first group, their working lives--and priorities--increasingly resemble those of the successful men they work with. One of the most profound changes in all human history is taking place before our eyes. Patterns are changing far faster in the developing world than they ever did in the West, yet we seem curiously blind to this remaking of our social landscape. A groundbreaking look at modern women, The XX Factor lifts the curtain on the social, cultural, and economic schisms behind the phenomenal rise of women in the workplace."--Publisher's website.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Goodbye to all that: the fracturing of sisterhood; title: The rich get rich and the poor get children; title: The return of the servant classes; title: Pizza and partners; title: Making it; title: The way we live now; title: Something to regret?; title: Sex and the single graduate; title: Working girls; title: Pretty girls and peacocks' tails; title: One of your own kind; title: Families unlimited.