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ConclusionLiving in a world which sends strong messages about the roles of women and of men, we often internalize these messages unwittingly. We must recognize our hidden assumptions and bring them into open discussion. Only then can we make conscious choices about how to live our lives and define new images of what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a mathematician. There is no inherent reason for these images to conflict. Balancing personal and professional life is a challenge for everyone, both men and women, and there is no one right way to strike that balance. Given that there is no longer a single prevailing model--in which the man is the professional and the woman stays home with the children--we need to be more flexible in our structures and recognize a multiplicity of models. In focusing on access to the public roles that were once the almost exclusive domains of men, the women's movement of the early 1960s and 1970s failed to deal with the tensions of combining this public/professional life with the continued demands of personal life. The next stage, therefore, involves taking down the barriers that make these two spheres disjoint, seeing the interactive nature of personal and professional life and discovering how they can be effectively interwoven. We must recognize that personal life is a professional matter and professional life is a personal matter.
Copyright ©1991
American Mathematical Society. Reprinted with
permission. |
