The Business of Being a Woman by Ida Tarbell

The Business of Being a Woman Reviews

• 
  Dawn Green

  I definitely don't agree with everything mentioned in this book, but it brings up some good points. It gives dignity to wives who become mothers and manage their homes well. We learn how men and women can be equal even though they are different and have very different strengths and weaknesses. It also talks about how women find purpose in their lives now that there are emancipation and more choices available.
  
  Many businesswomen today struggle to find the balance between their work lives and the role they play in their homes. A woman plays a very important part in making her children feel love, confidence and connection as they grow up. This influence shapes the future and quality of persons that we can expect to see in our society.
• 
  Shiloah

  Great book. Many of the things mentioned in the book still apply to women today. My book is now highlighted and filled with notes. I learned much. :)
• 
  Moehrchen

  At the beginning, I was quite unsure, whether Tarbell identified as a feminist or not. Looking at her biography (never married, very successful journalist), you could think she were. But in this little book of essays, as she calls it herself, she makes some (for me) uncomprehensible statements, that show her to be if not exactly the opposite but at least not on the side of feminism (which makes me wonder, why this book has such a good rating). I feel like she limits women to their "natural" role as mothers and housewives. Here are some of her often conflicting arguments:
  1. Women's natural place in society is the home. She tries by numerous arguments to convince the reader, that women are just restless because they do not value their own work enough and do not see the greatness of its posibilities. Women are too concerned with their clothes and looks and should better understand, that they do not need a great circle of aquaintances like men have (because they work). If they do want to engage themselves, they can do so in community work.
  2. Women need the same education as men, alas only to be able to educate their children (not in sciences but morals) and to make smart conversation with their husbands. Not because they can work in the same jobs as men. She underlines that women are of weaker stature and therefore belong to the home (which she quite glorifies, confusingly, since she herself was a spinster).
  3. Women without children are owing a duty to society to care for the communities' friendless (i.e. without family or help) children. They are building the society by taking care of the new generations.
  4. Men can not be expected to take care of household chores or children's upbringing, because they are working.
  5. She calls women that do not work themselves parasitical, because they live on the means, their men provide, but then again, women may only work before they get married, since bringing up children, community work and building a home is more important. As parasites they must not be surpirised if their husbands get bored of them.
  6. History, according to Tarbell, is full of examples of great women that helped to shape history (especially of the US), therefore it is a lie that women have been tyrannised of subjugated by men for centuries (as an unnamed feminist dared to say). To deny this, is to undermine women's role and mysogynist (that it IS a proven historical fact, she ignores herself and tries to turn tables?).
  7. Women are not oppressed or treated less because they are women but because they are weaker and men are stronger. Same as slaves are discriminated against. Feminists should not try to gain more rights for women but work on the improvement of all "men" and the edifying of society.
  
  Never in all this does she mention something men do wrong (except once: that in political speeches women do get belittled). Working herself and having no children, I cannot comprehend her argumentation. Was she bitter? There are some good points, I won't deny that, in the fact that women did spent enormous amount on dresses that made them unfit for anything (try moving fast in a hobble skirt) and that women have a right to learn, own and inherit property. Yet I could not enjoy reading this, not only because I am of a different opinion, but because her chain of arguments has holes.
  
  
• 
  L.E.

  I read this book for a paper I wrote for my women’s history class and I think it was one of the most enlightening books on the traditional roles women played in building and maintaining civilization. Her book aimed to respond to the suffragist and feminist pressures of the time, which made her and others feel that the women’s sphere was being demeaned in favor of man’s. Though Tarbell never married, had no children, and was a working woman, she did a good job at explaining the importance of mothers, wives, and homemakers in society. While I went into the book hesitant to sympathize with her position for a fear of being sexist, I found that there was really nothing espoused by Tarbell that demeaned women. If there was one part of the book that stuck with me the most, it was when she wrote that women needed “the ennobling influence of the past”. After reading her book, I feel that I got just that, and I greatly understand why women took up and defended the roles they played throughout history: they were noble ones.
• 
  Gabriela

  Synopsis: women don't belong in the kitchen, but they do! as society needs them to hone the education and cultivate the social skills of the future generation (and men apparently don't. cause they are men, of course. Why would men involve themselves in the education of THEIR childern, right? LOL. Only women should be concerned with this!!! And they need stay at home and tend to children!!! And women without children are parasites to society as they do not give back what they take!!!!! LOL x2.)
  
  Obviously the book had other good points, though few. And multiple other questionable statements and arguments that further reiterated the idea that women shouldn't tend to want what men have (professionally) and they should feel drawn to helping and educating, nurturing and tending to the young.
  
  Girl, bye
• 
  Cintrena

  Felt like a book my grandmother would give me with no explanation of why I should read it.
  
  A lot has change through history as well as women’s rights.
  
  I found some thoughtful quotes. Being someone who works in sustainable fashion, I did enjoy the chapter about clothing and “why” women spend money on clothing.
• 
  Salsabeel

  Mama liked it more than I did.
• 
  Karl

  I really struggle to say anything intelligent about this book written by Ida Tarbell and originally published in 1912. It’s not (as I had initially expected) an advice book; it tends to be quite politically pointed in places. It is not a feminist book because it tends to be quite dismissive of “militants and radicals,” was indifferent to suffrage, and in places tends to be quite critical of women as a whole. Nor would a contemporaneous anti-feminist find any comfort in this because it calls for a radical reevaluation of gender roles in society. The shapes of the arguments have changed dramatically since 1912 so I would not be able to say that the book is applicable today, but I’m left with the impression that the “more things change, the more they stay the same.”
  
  The value I find in this book is that is a snapshot of an intelligent and politically engaged women who was neither a Suffragette nor a Suffragist but nonetheless wanted a pronounced change in the status of women. The perspectives presented in this book—despite being moderate, reformist, and quite popular at the time—seldom make it into the history books.
  
• 
  Kathi Mckeown

  My recommendation is to read this electronically so that when names of individuals you are not familiar with appear, like Mercy Warren, you can look them up. I liked this book, especially knowing that in 1912 women were still eight years away from having voting rights. Ida Tarbell is an individual I would love to have met and listened to. One of the original muckrakers, she was ahead of her time.
  
• 
  Janet Richardson

  Before "her time"
  
  Most excellent writer and one of many excellent writings. Ida Tarbell is STILL brilliant. She would be, justifiably, horrified at our country's state of affairs.