76 Book Reviews
personal risk. belief in health care guidelines, belief in personal ability to keep to
guidelines. and social support to keep to guidelines. are critical factors in achieving
health behaviour change. Sorensen's well written overview could usefully have
come at the start of the book and provided a framework for the other articles.
Overall. the collection is worth reading although. with a few exceptions.
the articles stress the need for further data and research rather than presenting in
depth findings of their own. The content is considerably better than the general
presentation of the book itself. which rates very low on attractiveness and
originality. This is a great pity. Sorensen' s three photographs of awareness campaign
media enli ven the final pages of the book. but for the most part the layout and
presentation are dull. This detracts from the articles themselves. and is a contradiction
of the oft-repeated message within the book of the need for appropriate,
engaging strategies to break the HIV - drug injecting link.
Reviewed by Helen Jackson. Director of Research, School of Social Work. Harare.
Zimbabwe.
The Politics of Race and Gender in Therapy, Lenora Fulani (ed). The Haworth
Press. New York. 1988 (12Opp. US$24.95 hbk, 0 86656 7232).
A monograph published simultaneously as Women and Therapy. Vol 6 N04.
This book is written for societies where there is racism. and where women are
treated as second or third class citizens or worse. not only because they are women
but also because of their skin colour. The book acknowledges that some of the
issues discussed as the specific struggles of 'women of colour' are also experienced
by white women and men. These issues include powerlessness in an elitist society.
where people are seen as lower grade persons because they belong to a different
race, culture, are poor. unemployed and lack education.
This book will be valued by feminist therapists and people who work with
women in development. Therapists who use psychoanalysis may find the book
particularly interesting and challenging. especially the section on Marxism.
Psychoanalysis and Feminism. This section challenges Freudian ideas concerning
women' s sexuality and motherhood.
How applicable will this book be to Zimbabwe and other African
countries? First. our women do not experience the same problems that women of
colour in the USA, experience as a group. Even if a few do, there are strong
traditional and cultural ways of dealing with most of the problems that women
Book Reviews 77
might be experiencing. In some cases governments have developed policies to
protect all women despite their colour.
Second, psychoanalysis is expensive, and if taken up would not be for
those people who most need the service.
Third, it is slowly becoming obvious that the systemic approach to
counselling, and engaging clients in brief therapy, leeds to the best results from
therapy.
However, having said this, non feminist therapists and non psychoanalysts
could still benefit from reading this book, if it is read with a view to gaining
a different perspective on therapy with women, despite their colour. As the book
is emotionally charged (dealing with the emotive issues of politics, race and
gender), those who want to benefit from it must remain objective.
Reviewed by Eunice R Muzenda, Executive Tutor, Family Counselling Unit,
Harare, Zimbabwe.
Women, Development and Survival in the Third World, Haleh Afshar (ed),
Longman Group UK Limited, London, ] 99].
This book might better have been titled Women, crisis and survival, as the
examples given show women reacting to forces which work against development
- repressive fundamentalism in Iran, the American destabilisation crisis in Nicaragua,
and the economic and political crises of Nigeria. Women are shown to be
affected as consumers, as workers and most seriously as the ones on whose
shoulders falls the increasingly heavy burden of maintaining the family unit. At
best, as in Mary Stead's Nicaraguan example, gendered needs and concerns such
as chiIdcare policies and contraCeption have been put on hold by the state because
they are seen as potentially divisive in the context of a national emergency; at
worst, as Carolyne Dennis shows in Nigeria, the social problems created by a
deteriorating economy are off-loaded from the state to women, who are forced to
"manage" the crisis at the household level.
The differential impact of national crises on women because of their
special role as household managers is not news. Where this volume is more
innovative, however, is in those contributions which discuss programmes and
policies that are more truly developmental, ie deliberately conceived and carried
out to advance the national good, rather than as a response to disaster. The most
interesting such discussion is Delia Davin's study of China, which describes the
impact of "development" of the sort being widely touted after the recent turmoils