This issue of Feminist Studies continues our interest in Third World women and the politics of development. For the first time, we also begin an issue with the work of a Puerto Riquena, Rosario Ferré's moving talk, "The Writer's Kitchen," and her first published short story, "The Youngest Doll" (1970). Taking as her special theme the death of the old plantation culture and its replacement by modern, North American industrial values, Ferré's writing, in the best tradition of contemporary Latin American fiction, combines symbolism and allegory with feminism and sardonic political commentary.

The theme of colonialism reverberates through another essay in this issue, Mervat Hatem's "The Politics of Sexuality and Gender in Segregated Patriarchal Systems: The Case of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Egypt." Seeking the roots of Egyptian women's modern oppression in eighteenth-century Egypt, Hatem argues for a complex relationship between internal social forces and the external pressures resulting from French and English invasions. Her essay is also further evidence that heterosexual and homosexual relationships are socially constructed and continually changing.

Stifling norms of female behavior are also explored in Beth Kowaleski-Wallace's "Milton's Daughters: The Education of Eighteenth-Century Women Writers" and in Barbara Caine's "Family History as Women's History: The Sisters of Beatrice Webb." In the first essay Kowaleski-Wallace discusses the "imposter syndrome," the self-repression and inauthenticity that literary daughters like Hannah More took upon themselves when they were seduced into the role of "daddy's girl" by their 'benevolent" patriarchal fathers. In the second article, Caine demonstrates how the sisters and daughters who most fully accepted the social mores of the late nineteenth century were often the most unhappy in their limited role of wife and mother, but she also suggests that those who revolted did not necessarily find fulfillment either. Indeed, at different ages, different sisters could be labeled "successful."

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Rosario Ferré
The Writer's Kitchen

Rosario Ferré
The Youngest Doll (a Short Story)

Mervat Hatem
The Politics of Sexuality and Gender in
Segregated Patriarchal Systems: The Case of
Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Egypt

Beth Kowaleski-Wallace
Milton's Daughters: The Education of
Eighteenth-Century Women Writers

Barbara Caine
Family History as Women's History:
The Sisters of Beatrice Webb

Judith Sealander and Dorothy Smith
The Rise and Fall of Feminist Organizations
in the 1970s: Dayton As a Case Study

Azar Tabari
The Women's Movement in Iran:
A Hopeful Prognosis

Elizabeth Fee and Ruth Finkelstein
Abortion: The Politics of Necessity and
Choice (a Review Essay)

Ruth Milkman
Women's History and the Sears Case

Nildfer Çagatay, Caren Grown, Aida Santiago
The Nairobi Women's Conference: Toward
a Global Feminism? (a Commentary)