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methanojen's review against another edition
I found this slim read interesting for the most part; it's always informative to hear other women's perspectives, and Gornick's interpretation of the psychology of science and discovery is fascinating. However, I was disappointed that Gornick did not incorporate more modern and/or comparative material into her 25th anniversary book. Where did all the women who she interviewed in 1980 end up? Most of the book is spent rehashing what Gornick learned in 1980, and the parts that do deal with 2008 are mostly polly-anna in their optimism -- Gornick does not seem to adequately grasp that many of the problems that women dealt with in 2008 still indeed exist. Issues with work/life balance have not evaporated in the last 28 years as Gornick implies. What Gornick really got right was pointing out the research associate-ship problem that female scientists face: their husbands get professorships and they get research associate-ships. This is still absolutely the case today, and it is truly shameful. In my opinion as a feminist-scientist, it's essential that female scientists not "follow" their spouses but establish their own careers so as to prove that they are not reliant on their spouse to conduct good science, even if it means living apart for awhile.
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