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Women and Power in the Nonprofit
Sector
Teresa
Odendahl & Michael O’Neill, eds. (Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1994)
Millions
of American women (full- and part-time staff members, philanthropists,
and volunteers) are deeply involved in the nation’s nonprofit sector;
historically, women barred from leadership positions in business, government,
and the professions have fashioned parallel structures in the nonprofit
sector through which they exercised their talents and influenced American
society. In this landmark collection, 12 authors from the fields of anthropology,
economics, history, law, public policy, psychology, and sociology examine
the nature and extent of women’s participation in the voluntary sector.
They address such topics as the powerful role the women’s movement has
played in enhancing the status of women in nonprofits; how the experience
of women i
are distributed across various economic classes. The book's
findings indicate that while few institutions serve primarily
the poor, there is no evidence of a gross distribution of benefits upward
toward the more affluent. The analysis of this data makes for a book with
profound implications for future social and tax policy.
The book examines the role of private nonprofit organizations
in providing services to needy people. Each chapter, based on commissioned
papers, attempts to deal with the same deceptively simple question (who
benefits?) with regard to one subsector of the nonprofit arena (religious,
health service, education, social service, arts and culture, and foundations).
Authors were asked to address two specific issues: “What are the benefits
produced by the nonprofit institutions in the [particular] subsector?
Second, how are these benefits distributed across households of different
incomes?” Clotfelter also provides a definition of benefit: “In theory,
the value of a good or service is equal to the amount a person would be
willing be pay for it. The net benefit to a consumer can be defined as
this value minus any amount actually paid, or the consumer surplus.” Softcover,
286 pages, $13.95
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