Suchergebnisse

This article focuses on work-life balance: the combination of work outside the home with parental and domestic responsibilities. Today, problems arising from work-life balance constitute an important obstacle to gender equality. Most commentators have defined this as a women's problem, but others argue that until men assume an equal share of responsibilities in the home women cannot gain equality in the work-force, the home, or many other areas of life. The article looks at the origins of this debate, focusing on three prominent feminist thinkers—the German Lily Braun, the Swedish Alva Myrdal, and the French Simone de Beauvoir. The central issue—a father's role in the family—is placed in the context of three historical periods: the pre-war era (1900–1918); the interwar era (1918–1945); and the post-war era (1945–1960).

This article discusses the career of Patty Smith Hill, a major figure in the American kindergarten movement, in the context of the Progressive Era in American history. Hill, an educator and child-welfare activist, became known both as a reformer of early-childhood education and as an advocate of the inclusion of the kindergarten, originally a private institution, in public-school systems. The article acknowledges this as one of the most significant achievements of the woman-led reform movements of the Progressive Era, but at the same time notes that it involved a substantial transfer of power from the women who had originally developed the kindergarten to the male principals and superintendants who now supervised kindergarten teachers, often without much understanding of their distinctive methods and aims. As a professor at Columbia Teachers College, Hill also exercised an international influence. Hill's career exemplifies broader patterns of women's professionalization during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.