Synopses & Reviews
This volume, which grows out of a research project on women and philanthropy sponsored by the Center for the Study of Philanthropy at the City University of New York, expands our understanding of female beneficence in shaping diverse political and religious cultures. Each contributor examines the role of philanthropy--the giving of time, money, and/or valuables for public benefit--in shaping nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), civil society, and women's political culture worldwide.
The essays in Women, Philanthropy, and Civil Society illustrate the extent to which government, the market, religion, colonialism, and feminism have shaped the role of female philanthropy and philanthropists in different national settings. By shifting the focus from organizations to donors and volunteers, the authors assess the relative importance of each of these factors in creating opportunities for citizen participation, as well as the role of female philanthropy in opening a space for women in the public sphere.
Review
"This is an unusually successful and valuable collection of essays, without the usual randomness and incoherence of the genre. The writers, part of a project on women, philanthropy, and civil society at the editor's Center for Philanthropy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, worked with a common set of hypotheses. This enabled them to grapple with (roughly) comparable analytical themes (although of course the translation across cultures is not perfect). The authors are extremely well chosen--almost all are primarily scholars, though many are also philanthropic and feminist actors in their home countries. They include such estimable figures as Susan Chambre (USA), Leilah Landim (Brazil), Per Selle (Norway), and Ghada Hashem Talhami (Palestine/USA). One of the great strengths of the volume is its focus on the Muslim experience. McCarthy has a brief but very useful introduction, which sums up the general findings about the significance of women's organizations, entrepreneurship, and volunteerism for the construction of civil society in recent history. An admirable addition to the publisher's series on philanthropy." --S. N. Katz, Princeton University, Choice, March 2002 Indiana University Press Indiana University Press
About the Author
KATHLEEN D. MCCARTHY is Director of the Center for the Study of Philanthropy and Professor of History at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York and author of Women's Culture: American Philanthropy and Art, 1830-1930; Noblesse Oblige: Charity and Cultural
Philanthropy in Chicago, 1849-1929; and Lady Bountiful Revisited: Women, Philanthropy, and Power, among other books.
Table of Contents
Preliminary Table of Contents:
Introduction/Kathleen D. McCarthy
1. Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century Ireland/Maria Luddy
2. Women and Philanthropy in France: From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries/Evelyne Diebolt
3. Women and Philanthropy in Brazil: An Overview/Leilah Landim
4. The Norwegian Voluntary Sector and Civil Society in Transition: Women as a Catalyst of Deep-Seated Change/Per Selle
5. Women and Philanthropy in Colonial and Post-Colonial Australia/Shurlee Swain
6. Parallel Power Structures, Invisible Careers, and the Changing Nature of American Jewish Women's Philanthropy/Susan M. Chambré
7. Women and Philanthropy in Egypt/Amani Kandil
8. An Islamic Activist in Interwar Egypt/Beth Baron
9. Women and Philanthropy in Palestinian and Egyptian Societies: The Contributions of Islamic Thought and the Strategy of National Survival/Ghada Hashem Talhami
10. Women and Philanthropy in India/Pushpa Sundar
11. Women and Philanthropy in South Korea from a Non-Western Perspective/Hye Kyung Lee
Notes on Contributors