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14 February 2005
REVIEW: Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women's Changing Lives By Anna Fels
Nancy Jane Moore's novella Changeling is currently available from Aqueduct Press. She is the readings coordinator for Broad Universe.
We've spent a lot of time within Broad Universe discussing the issue of why more men than women get published within SF/F/H. It's been discussed regularly on the email list, and Diane Silver wrote about it in "It's the Wimp Factor—Or Is It?" in the November, 2003 Broadsheet. One explanation for the disparity appears to be that women submit fewer stories than men; several editors (most notably Gordon Van Gelder) have generated figures to support this by doing gender counts of their slush pile. Presuming there are equal numbers of female writers as male, the debate has centered on why there are fewer submissions by women. Are women just too busy handling all the details of family life to write and submit? Are they choosing subjects that editors find a little too feminist, or maybe too feminine, for SF readers? Are the editors more encouraging to male writers than female—consciously or subconsciously? Or are women just not tough enough to handle rejection? Personally, I initially found merit in all of those arguments. Women with families do juggle an incredible number of responsibilities and even those of us who are single and childless have obligations to parents and other family members. Feminist stories certainly make some people uncomfortable (they're supposed to), and it's also easy to get the feeling that it's okay for women to write SF so long as they're writing on "manly" topics—many of the more successful female authors write about male characters. While I've generally found most of the male editors and writers within SF/F/H to be less sexist than the general population, I do see a tendency for men to hang together and support one another without quite realizing they're excluding women. Women, on the other hand, seem to support both male and female writers. It is not unusual to see a "year's best" list by a man that includes few, if any, women writers, whereas a similar list by a woman often includes a pretty equal gender balance. But to be honest, I tended toward the wimp factor. I know too many talented women who, for reasons that I have never understood, shove their work in a drawer. My male friends had me convinced that men really did learn to be tough, to deal with adversity and rejection, while growing up. I figured women didn't get that training. As someone who went to law school back when women made up 10 percent of the class, and who has studied martial arts for 25 years, I knew I had developed some toughness. I do submit my stories regularly. But every time I passed up an opportunity to chat with an editor or didn't follow through on a contact I made at a convention, I worried that I wasn't tough enough. Anna Fels's Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women's Changing Lives provides a detailed analysis that explains not only why women don't submit their fiction, but also why so many of them struggle with their careers. Fels convinced me that I was wrong: It isn't toughness training that men get more of than women; it's recognition. Recognition, according to Fels, is a crucial component in helping people achieve their ambitions. Using a variety of studies—beginning with the basic tenet in sociology that people form their identities based on the reactions of other persons to them—Fels demonstrates the importance of recognition in learning, feeling motivated to pursue an ambition, and being productive in one's chosen field. She begins her chapter on the importance of recognition with the observation that: "We are not used to thinking of recognition as a fundamental emotional need." However, it is clear that her study and professional experience have shown her that, in fact, recognition is the underpinning for most success in the world. Fels is a psychiatrist and medical professor who also writes for the New York Times and other publications. In this book, she uses her own life as an example. She was a young woman who wanted a profession, and who found some mentors and other recognition systems along the way. She is, in short, not that different from her readers—a woman figuring out how to go after her ambition in a new reality. Fels's book focuses on the importance of ambition and recognition. The two things go together, she points out. Generally, ambitions involve a striving for mastery in a field, and a wish to be appreciated for that mastery. According to Fels, the drive to master a skill is fundamental to human ambition and people are rarely satisfied by recognition for something that requires no effort, such as family heritage. But they definitely do want to be recognized for their skills, Fels points out: Neither mastery without recognition nor recognition without mastery satisfy most people. Ambition is the starting point, Fels says. In her work as a psychiatrist, she has discovered that women who have a clear and detailed idea of what they want to do have better self-esteem and general well-being than those whose ideas are more amorphous. Recognizing our ambitions and trying to achieve them are necessary and healthy things. But then she brings recognition into the equation: "If we are to pursue an ambition, we must have both the wish for mastery and a potential audience, along with an expectation that we can reach the desired end point." It is with recognition that things get particularly sticky. At every stage in life, women get less recognition than men. Fels refers to studies that show high-achieving high school girls get the least amount of attention from their teachers—in fact, low-achieving girls do much better in this regard, suggesting that women get the idea early on that achievement is not feminine. Another study shows that law school professors are more likely to mentor men than women. Plus women have been socialized to consider it improper to engage in self-promotion or to develop professionally advantageous relationships. Fels quotes several women making disparaging remarks about the way men "schmooze" and otherwise make an effort to get to know people who can help their careers. "The idea that merit alone is sufficient is one that women have long cherished," Fels says. "It gives them a rationale for avoiding the 'unfeminine' chore of soliciting support." But, bluntly, she points out that great work alone "is unlikely to produce appropriate recognition for accomplishments." Dealing with ambition is more complicated for women than men, Fels points out. "Women, more than men, need to actively imagine themselves into their futures because so little is mapped out for them at this historical moment. Unlike men, women have few accepted roles in our society—or more accurately, they have too many: innovative professional, devoted mother, competent employee, sexually attractive 'babe,' supported wife, talented homemaker, and independent wage earner, to name a few. It falls nearly entirely on the individual woman to carve out a life for herself with adequate meaning and satisfactions." One of the important things Fels does in this book is to remind us just how recent women's rights and opportunities really are. "The number, speed, and magnitude of changes in women's lives," she says, "that have occurred over the last century are without historical precedent: women's life spans nearly doubled; birth control was discovered; women's legal, political, and educational rights were all won." What our mothers were doing at our age is not an effective guideline—this is as true for those of us in our teens and twenties as it is for those of us in our forties, fifties, and eighties—because in each decade more doors have opened to women. For example, when I was a teenager, I could conceive of being a lawyer, because I had met a few women lawyers. But it never occurred to me that I could be an astronaut, because all the astronauts were men. The very speed of that change means that we're far from figuring out how women can pursue their ambitions as easily as men. Only a few "no girls allowed" places of blatant discrimination are left (at least in the U.S.) and they are being challenged, but there are still barriers. Male resentment gets in our way. (These changes didn't happen without affecting men, and many of them are angry, as Fels points out.) Other barriers include childcare responsibilities and outdated ideas about what it means to be feminine. One of the ideas about femininity that women still struggle with is how to take credit for their work. In the mid-to-late 20th Century, Fels points out, many women began to develop expertise, but they were still expected to be "selfless" in setting their goals. She uses famous women to bring this issue home to us, quoting from an interview with the sculptor Maya Lin about how "the work is important" or discussing how Simone de Beauvoir saw Jean-Paul Sartre as the dominant figure and herself as auxiliary, even after writing about the phenomenon in The Second Sex. I found this portion of the book very moving. I, too, have a tendency to deflect praise, to credit the work or the group, rather than take credit for myself. Fels points out many such issues in her chapters titled "Distorted Ambitions," "Avoiding Attention," and "Femininity." But it was in the chapters on the importance of recognition in achieving ambition that I began to truly understand why talented women would put their work in a drawer. In a chapter called "Parents, Mentors, Institutions, and Peers," she points out that women tend to drop out of every field in greater numbers than men at every step along the way. One example, given in the introduction, is in the study of physics: In high school, girls make up 37 percent of physics students; in college, 22 percent. Fifteen percent of those who get a degree in physics are women; 10 percent of the physics Ph.D.s go to women. Seven percent of assistant professors and 3 percent of full professors are women. The cause of this phenomenon appears to be based in "the timing and sources of the recognition that females receive." Fels points out that a study of women who switched out of science matters found no significant difference between those who stayed and those who left in terms of "performance, aptitude, or behavior." External factors, such as encouragement or reinforcement by teachers or the lack thereof, seemed to be the reason why women stayed or left. A related study showed that men, while appearing to work on their own, got informal mentoring. Fels also cites several examples of famous, accomplished women who received crucial approval and support from a teacher. A key component of this support was being taken seriously. But it isn't just one mentor or good teacher who makes the difference, Fels says. Successful people usually develop a whole constellation of colleagues and mentors who help them develop their careers. She mentions the "acknowledgements" page in books, where authors thank those who helped them along the way. I note that Fels mentions 27 people in the acknowledgements page for this book, including a professor with whom she studied as an undergraduate along with a number of colleagues and friends and family. In the chapter called "Unequal Rewards," we get to the heart of the matter: "A deep and pervasive cultural prejudice leads to the reflex bestowing of recognition on males and a largely unconscious withholding of recognition from females in all but the sexual sphere—where it is complementary to male needs." Fels cites numerous studies in schools—a typical one points out that girls in math classes got 30 percent of the encouraging comments and 84 percent of the discouraging ones. In studies on the effect of gender in employee evaluation, researchers found that work with a male name on it got much higher evaluation than the same work attributed to a woman. Fels concludes: "[T]he entire texture of women's lives is permeated with small events of nonrecognition." Men aren't tougher than women; they've just received more recognition every step along the way. Based on my reading of this book, I speculate that it is recognition that keeps people submitting fiction in the face of rejection, that keeps them working on a difficult story until they get it right. And it is that lack of recognition that causes so many women to avoid submitting their work. We can't undo the recognition we didn't get at various times, but we can look for friends, lovers, and colleagues who will help us get it now. And, Fels points out, it is important to remember that we are still working to implement the changes brought into our lives by feminism: We must work for childcare solutions, for abolition of the "mommy track," for better encouragement of girls in school. A review of this book published when it first came out praised it, but also found it depressing. I disagree. While Fels points out some real and difficult challenges, she also puts the situation in terms that we can work with. Women are ambitious. We want to achieve mastery, and we want recognition for our work. It's an important part of being human. The more we understand about this, the easier it will be for us to take action to reach for our own stars. Necessary Dreams is required reading for all women trying to figure out how to achieve their ambitions—and for all parents and teachers who want to help their girls reach their dreams. A paperback edition of the book was published by Anchor in February 2005. |
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