Book+Reviews+-+June+2011



** Book Reviews ** **June 2011** toc

=Women in Academic Leadership = Professional Strategies, Personal Choices **Dean, Diane R., Bracken, Susan J. and Allen, Jeanie K., eds.; Clair Van Ummersen ****(foreword) **


 * Reviewed by: Rebecca Tolley-Stokes** [[image:http://www.styluspub.com/files/covers/9781579221898_cf200.jpg width="220" height="331" align="right"]]
 * ** Paperback **: 265 pages
 * ** Publisher **: Sterling, VA. : Stylus Publishing, LLC. ( 2009)
 * ** ISBN-13 **: 978-1-57922-189-8
 * ** Subjects **: Sex discrimination in higher education -- United States; Women college administrators -- United States; Educational leadership -- United States.

As one in the Women in Academe Series published by Stylus Publishing, LLC, **//Women in Academic Leadership: Professional Strategies, Personal Choices//** presents ten chapters that address the challenges women in academic leadership face, and in particular, notes the low number of women presidents, provosts, and upper-level administrators. Most chapters within the text operate from the framework that women are underrepresented in academic leadership, especially women of color. And in fact, several authors present their work from a feminist post-structuralist perspective to highlight the ways in which institutional cultures block the development and growth of women leaders. These works include research studies, scholarly essays, and personal narratives written by women who are faculty and administrators working in a range of roles: presidents, program coordinators, deans, and department chairs. They also represent academics at various points in their careers at both public and private institutions.

Chapters one and five regarded community college leadership and that made this volume particularly meaningful and relevant for women with career paths in that environment. Likewise, chapters seven and eight focused on guiding women of color to academic leadership. Other chapters, such as chapter three and four were subject specific for academic medicine and dentistry. And chapter four related the particular challenge of the “stained-glass ceiling” that women administrators experience at faith-based college and universities.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">Despite the specificity of each chapter, its content is general or excellent enough to apply to each reader. For example, career advice contained within chapter eight - Yolanda T. Moses’ “Advice from the Field: Guiding Women of Color to Academic Leadership” - draws from the author’s “lived experience, observed experience of others, and from my careful study of changing trends in academe.” (187) Moses’ essay directly connects with the reader given that it is written in the first-person, and is one of two (though there is one hybrid essay which employs both scholarly and first-person narrative), in the collection. She speaks to her audience as a mentor would and is one of the few authors who frankly offers strategies for navigating any leadership roles you wish to take on.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">Another arresting chapter, also written in the first-person, though collaboratively by four academics, is chapter two, “Narrating Gendered Leadership” by Jill Mattuck Tarule, Jane Henry Applegate, Penelope M. Early, and Peggy J. Blackwell. Within the narrative, the chapter describes a leadership group the four women developed at a conference and sustained over the course of a decade. <span style="background-color: #ffffdd; border: 1px solid #9999aa; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 105%; margin: 10px auto 10px 30px; padding: 10px; width: 90%;">despite that it has expanded as new women leaders were appointed and contracted as others retired. A core group of four has remained. We live and have lived all over the country and overseas and we have learned that a nonproximate support group such as ours is an unusual resource for building support and considering theory. We have written this chapter to tell our story about what we have learned in that process, to share the importance of such networks, and to encourage other women to develop similar group of their own. (32) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">One of the most important reoccurring themes from all the chapters was the importance of mentoring. Most of the book’s authors mentioned that women in academic receive mentoring early in their careers, but cited the problem finding of mid-career and high-career mentors and how identifying and securing appropriate mentors at the same institution may be difficult. Providing strategies for women to surmount the barriers and dilemmas to reach their academic leadership potential, was one of the book’s main goals. The chapters contained within addresses this goal to a degree, but merely reading research studies, or about an education fellows program offers little encouragement to an isolated academic woman yearning to expand her leadership skills. It is likely that this type of reader is already aware of the problems covered within the book, though having the statistics and references provided in black and white before her fingers offers a welcome resource to draw from.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">Of course, the book’s limitations were its two chapters on community colleges and readers may find that its contents are skewed toward that audience. It also offered specific chapters on medical and dentistry leadership. Yet, in the end, there was a good balance between generality and specificity that lends the book a sense of facility. The book’s inclusion of diversity topics that easily cross ethnic boundaries again provide the book ample audiences and readers who will benefit from the wisdom and data within it pages—though the audience is quite specific to women in academe who aspire to positions of leadership.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">Applying the lessons and strategies gleaned from reading these chapters can be a boon for women leaders in academia as would be paying attention to forthcoming titles released in the Women in Academe Series. The glaring absence of a chapter on women in academic librarianship leadership makes the book of tangential use to librarians. However, many of the strategies such as mentoring and professional development outlined within the pages are easily applied to our profession, especially within academic librarianship, but also within special, school, and public librarianship as well.

=<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> = =<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Brain Storm = <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Jordan-Young, Rebecca M. **


 * Reviewed by: Megan Hodge**
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Hardback**: 408 pages
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Publisher**: Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2010.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**ISBN-13**: 978-0-67405-730-2
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">**Subjects**: Brain -- Sex differences; Sex -- Physiology; Brain -- Physiology; Gender identity.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">Is homosexuality caused by unusual hormone exposure in utero? Are men and women predisposed to behaving differently because of brain structure, hormone levels, or other factors? While it has become scientific heresy to dispute the certainty of at least the first claim, author Jordan-Young argues that these discoveries, much-heralded in both the popular and scholarly media, are not only wrong but culturally harmful.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">Over the last 50 years, hundreds of research studies have been done to test brain organization theory, which essentially states that a person’s gender identity and sexuality are largely determined by the quantity of sex hormones a fetus is exposed to. The majority of these studies have shown that prenatal exposure to sex hormones does produce some effects on sex, gender identity, and sexuality, which has lead most researchers to drop the otherwise obligatory language of uncertainty and turned theory into fact.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">Author Jordan-Young, a sociomedical scientist and women’s studies professor at Columbia, first heard of brain organization theory while she was doing sexuality research on the AIDS epidemic. How, she wondered, “could gayness take a single identifiable form in the brain when it takes such varied forms in people’s lives?” (ix). The studies she read that tested the theory were troubling, with many exhibiting researcher bias, poorly defined variables, and poor methodology. Eventually she decided to conduct a formal literature review of, essentially, //all// the studies that had been done on brain organization theory as it relates to gender and sexuality.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">**//Brain Storm//** is her analysis of those 300+ studies, enhanced by her interviews with nearly twenty of the most influential scientists in the field—the first of its kind ever conducted. In order to really know whether prenatal exposure to hormones does have an effect, it is necessary to group the studies by type and the variable studied; as an analogy, a literature review of studies analyzing the connection between smoking and cancer should not include studies analyzing chewing tobacco use. When looked at from this perspective, the sheer number of studies indicating hormonal effects, “a slam-dunk case in support of brain organization theory” yields contradictory results (66).

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">It is inconclusive, for the most part, whether prenatal exposure to hormones has any effect; some studies indicate a positive correlation, similar ones indicate a negative correlation, and still others find no effect whatsoever. And this is widespread, for nearly all types of studies on brain organization theory. One of the few solid findings? Men have more estrogen than women! (One of the interesting, little-known facts Jordan-Young points out is that the media—and many scientists—have created artificially limited roles for estrogen and testosterone; not only are neither entirely sex-related, but the presence of estrogen actually increases men’s testosterone levels!)

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">In addition to these contradictory findings, many of the studies are further weakened by poor methodology and scientific practice. For example, many studies examined multiple variables all at once; this is generally frowned upon because the more things one looks at, the greater the likelihood of finding some overlaps. Additionally, many of the scientists Jordan-Young interviewed stated that the differences between male sexuality and female sexuality were “common sense”—which goes against standard scientific practice of not taking anything for granted.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">It is fascinating to read Jordan-Young systematically break down the constructs that have been created by scientists eager to figure out what makes people gay, and a popular culture just as eager to talk about it. While she does not offer any alternative theories for what actually causes non-traditional gender identities and sexualities—“this book sets out to question answers”—Jordan-Young challenges the foundations of a theory that has come to be taken as fact and has become the basis for many assumptions about homosexuality and gender roles in general (ix).

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">45 pages of notes, a full reference list of the 300+ studies the author examined, limited but helpful illustrations, and a thorough index make //Brain Storm// especially useful for scholars. While the book is densely and intelligently written, the author takes care to define any scientific or confusing terms she uses, so it’s a manageable read for people interested in women’s or gender studies, not just scholars in the field. Due to its singularity—no other literature review as comprehensive currently exists—and significance, //Brain Storm// is a must-buy for any academic library, regardless of the strength of its women’s/gender studies program.

=<span class="Normal__Char" style="color: #00b0f0; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;">Policewomen Who Made History = <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span class="Normal__Char" style="color: #00b0f0; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Breaking through the Ranks <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">**<span class="apple_002dstyle_002dspan__Char">Robert L. Snow **

**<span class="apple_002dstyle_002dspan__Char" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Reviewed by: Kelli Kramer **
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span class="Normal__Char" style="color: #00b0f0;">**Hardcover**: <span class="Normal__Char">208 pages
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span class="Normal__Char" style="color: #00b0f0;">**Publisher**: <span class="Normal__Char">Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. (June 16, 2010)
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span class="Normal__Char" style="color: #00b0f0;">**ISBN-13**: 978-1-44220-033-3
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span class="apple_002dstyle_002dspan__Char" style="color: #00b0f0;">**Category**: <span class="apple_002dstyle_002dspan__Char">Social Science : Women's Studies - General

<span class="Normal__Char" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">In //**Policewomen Who Made History: Breaking through the Ranks**//, former police officer Robert Snow covers the history of women in law enforcement. He includes the testimony of some of the first female cops who sought to contribute to their communities and prove that women were just as capable as men. These firsthand accounts, as well as Snow's own personal experience, offer readers insight into just how hard it was for women to gain acceptance and respect in a largely male dominated profession. In many ways, the changes that began to occur in the workplace for women in law enforcement mirrored the larger feminist movement that was simultaneously taking place across the country in the late 1960’s and through the 1970’s.

<span class="Normal__Char" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">The book was not only informational but also surprisingly entertaining and inspirational. The author does an excellent job of showing the reader just how far female officers have come. It is really almost laughable now to think that not so long ago female cops actually had to wear skirts, heels, and carry their guns in a purse while on the job. This book will prove to any reader that women should never be underestimated and can handle even the most dangerous and physically demanding jobs.

<span class="Normal__Char" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 105%;">This particular subject of female police officers seems to currently be of great interest to many people. The television network, TLC, currently has five shows they air that are devoted solely to women cops and their experiences on the force. People are fascinated by women who have such a profession, because it shows that there is nothing that a woman can’t do. Snow’s book supports this very notion. Reading this book has shown me that the key to overcoming stereotypes is not done by screaming the loudest but through hard work and determination. Any reader, male or female, could find something to gain in reading this book.