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Reviews The book proves important information to refute the argument that women have never had it so good. Such an argument that women have never had it so good takes no account of how bad it has been for women in the past and no account of how far there is still to go before equal rights for women are reflected in property settlements. There is a danger when progressive laws are introduced to see them, in relation to the old laws, as the ultimate in reform and to lose sight of further possibilities. While they may, like the Australian Law Act, encode a more favourable attitude towards women than has existed in the past, they may also be only one step along the way to genuine equality between the sexes.
LYNNE SPENDER

developments in feminist thinking, Covering a large body of writing, she sets forth clearly the different strands in radical feminist thought. And her account is not a static comparison. Eisenstein presents a convincing historical account of how. under the pressure of internal logic and external events, one mode of thought evolved into another.
MIDGE QUANDT

FOR RICHER OR POORER: MONEY. MARRIAGE AND PROPERTYRIGHTS by Joycelynne A. Scutt and Di Graham, 195 pages. Penguin, Australia, 1984. Price (Aus) $7.95. With evidence that property settlements under the progressive Australian Family Law Act engender uncertainty and disadvantage women, Jocelynne Scutt and Di Graham propose a change to the law in the form of equal rights to marital assets. Under this system, partners of a marriage at all times own 50 per cent each of the assets acquired during the marriage-regardless of their current status in or out of the paid workforce and regardless of the personal attitudes and values of the courts. The authors point out that what was orginally touted as the broad discretion of the family law court to determine property settlements as it thinks fit has in many cases turned out to be a discretion to think men are fitter than women. Consequently, they propose a contractual relationship which would involve spouses in full disclosure of assets and in written arrangements for the inclusion and exlusion of particular items of property. Should the marriage subsequently break down, there could be no argument as to who gets what. All marital assets not excluded by the agreement belong equally to the partners. The courts. which the authors claim to be inadequate to the task would no longer be involved in assessing the needs (and worth) of the partners and women would no longer be left uninformed or misinformed about the property to which they were entitled. Men, who with the aid of accountants and experts, have managed to alienate property would be obliged to account for all assets acquired during the marriage. For those who decry the loss of the romantic ideal in such business-like arrangements, Joycelynne Scutt and Di Graham point out that the arrangements are no more than a formalizing of the popular idea of equal partnership in marriage. Is it really more distasteful to-day to draw up and sign a document detailing property interests than to agree to obey a husband as women have been doing for centuries? Surely. if all marriages involved a property arrangement. such documents would become as normal as marriage licences! Underlying the well-documented information in the book is the understanding that regardless of the objectivity of the law. as stated. a society which is premised on male attitudes and values automatically allows privileges to men. Whether in terms of mens greater opportunities to alienate property, womens fewer opportunities to acquire it or the decisions of the courts in allocating it, cases presented reveal that men frequently emerge from property settlements with better immediate and potential financial situations than their wives. Especially in cases where the settlement of property takes place outside of the court. it is dangerous indeed to assume that they are fair or satisfactory under the present system.

WOMEN AND EDUCATION: EQUITY OR EQUALITY, edited

Elizabeth Fennema and M. Jane Ayer, McCutcheon, Berkeley, 1984. Price $19.50.

266

by pages.

Women and Education joins two major independent women and education, with the powerful subjects, and. As in the books of the American conjunction, philosopher of education, John Dewey, the work bonds these categories in an interdependent relationship that will shape and change each. The synthesis between women and their education in turn influences social and cultural conditions. But affecting that synthesis from the start is our societys view of the aim of education. Historically, the charge has been for social equality, whereby both men and women seek the full eradication of gender and racial differences in an attempt to become equals. But in Women and Educalion there is another goal proposed: a recognition of individual differences toward the aim of achieving what the authors refer to as plurality or social justice. This they calr a condition of social Equity rather than one seeking Equality. Dealing with these concepts is the crux of the work. The opening essay poses the central question: Equity or Eaualitv: What Shall It Be? The two key terms are defined: and we are quickly brought to the realisation that there is an underlying irony in trying to insist on the attainment of Equality. for the authors suggest that it is not only an unrealistic aim. but more fundamentally. an unhealthy one in heterogeneous society. To wit. in the name of Equality educators have insisted that a nondiscriminating curriculum be constructed which will formulate an identical. undifferentiated education for all students. in secondary and higher institutions of learning, among state boards of education. and on numerous school committees. the buzz words--androgyand mainstreaming-have dominated. ny. assimilation Government monies and countless programs bolster the unquestioned aim of education: the fashioning of a sexless. classless individual who is indistinguishable from the great normative mass. This vast effort has been undertaken in order to eliminate biases and prejudices among diverse peoples from a gamut of economic. ethnic, and social backgrounds. and appears essential to the workings of a democracy. For nearly two hundred years it has been an