Sharing The Work

It is 1970. Strober has just been told by the chairman of Berkeley's economics department that she can never get tenure. Driving home afterward she realizes the truth: she is being denied a regular faculty position because she is a mother. Angry, she also finds her life's work: to study and fight sexism, in the workplace, in academia, and at home. Strober's memoir captures the spirit of a revolution lived fully, from her Brooklyn childhood to her Stanford seminar on women and work. Strober's interest in women and work began when she saw her mother's frustration at the limitations of her position as a secretary. Her consciousness of the unfairness of the usual distribution of household chores came when she unsuccessfully asked her husband for help with housework. Later, when a group of conservative white male professors sputtered at the idea of government-subsidized child care, Strober made the case for its economic benefits. In the 1970s, the term "sexual harassment" had not yet been coined. Occupational segregation, quantifying the value of work in the home, and the cost of discrimination were new ideas.