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corrections or om issions you felt were called for. This is exactly the right that every oral author has, and you should let him/her know it. After such a review of the material by the oral author, you will ask the person to sign a statem ent permitting you (or other designated person) to make use of the tapes and transcripts. Let the pprson know exactly what you wish to do with the material, so that the person agrees in principle to the project. You want to try to get the oral author to agree to as liberal a use of the materials as possible, but people have been known to make all kinds of reservations about the use of their memoirs. For example, Nelson Rockefeller’s memoirs are sealed in Columbia University’s oral history archives until ten years after his death, or 1997, whichever co m es later. Altough it’s unlikely you ’ll be dealing with such requests, you might encounter so m eo n e who has valuable historical information but hesitates to make it public during his lifetime. If you are interested in doing such an interview, you could probably make arrangements to have the material sealed in the archive of som e academ ic or other institution. Whatever the ca se may be, be sure to obtain the oral author’s written permission to release the materials. You will be saving yourself a lot of headaches, and perhaps a lawsuit by annoyed relatives of the interviewee! Before the first interview takes place, you should learn to use a tape recorder. ’’Obviously,” you might say. But you would be suprised at the number of people who d on ’t bother to learn how to u se that simple machine well, with the result that their tapes are less than perfect. Why jeopardize a good interview by not knowing where the "record” button is, or how to regulate volume? Simple ca ssettes abound. Borrow one from a friend or relative. Ask them to teach you how to use it. C assettes are easier to handle becau se they are less bulky. However, you may want to use the larger reel-to-rell m achines. T hese have the advantage of variable speed, so that you may tape the interview at IVz IPS (Inches per seco n d ). This is an important feature if you wish to u se the tapes for radio broadcasts, sin ce tapes recorded at slower sp ee d s will distort the voice in a radio broadcast. Also reel-to-reel tapes are easier to edit. Do not skimp on good quality tapes, whichever type of machine you use. The difference between a mediocre tape and a good one is vast, and the difference in price is only a couple of dollars. Considering the amount of time and effort you are putting into the project, a good tape is worth every penny you spend on it. When bying ca ssette tapes, by the way, c h o o se the 60- or 90- minute on es. T hose which run for 120 minutes are very thin — they tend to tangle, jam, or even break under stress. Play around with your recorder until you feel comfortable using it. Do a few tests under different circum stances. Experi ment with volume level while recording, make note of the optimal position of the microphone. In fact, do a couple of mini- interviews with your husband, relatives or neighbors. Play back the tape and s e e if you are satisfied with the quality. Now you have prepared yourself for the first interview. The third in this series of articles will d iscu ss interviewing techniques. Til February, then. statistics which demonstrate that women live at least 15 odd years after their children have left home and after they have been widowed. Nor d o es it explain why so many women "choose" to take a job, but who almost never "choose” to pursue a career. Discrimination merely frustrates c h o ic e s al ready made. Something more pernicious perverts the moti vation to ch oose. There are those, even today, who feel that wom en's lack of achievem ent outside the home is a function of their ’’femininity.” Biology, so it is claimed, is the source of inborn differences in, say, independence or mathematical ability. Wo men are biologically destined — handicapped and limited, as it were — to stay home all day and to shun serious professional careers. What this argument states is that female physiology is som ehow responsible for the fact that so few women em erge from childhood with the motivation to pursue careers. The assum ptions on which this argument is based are so erroneous that one has difficulty in understanding how it ever gained credence and a ccep tan ce among intelligent people. First of all, the assumption is made that biology, nature, alone defines a person’s entire personality. While such a simplistic view of "female p sy ch o lo g y ” is maintained, in every other c a se - for example, in d iscu ssio n s about why so m e individuals b e co me felons and others grow up to be law-abiding citizens - w e recognize that environment, as well as heredity, im pacts on human development. The nature versus nurture controversy is one to which the definitive answer is simply not known. Re search data does, in fact, indicate that nurture — from environ ment in which a child is reared, to the social conditioning which sh e experiences and the role models to which sh e is exp osed — acts as a far more important influence. Until a so ciety is willing to raise its boys and its girls with equal opportunity to c h o o se roles for them selves — without being conditioned into a stereotype of what is appropriate for a man or a woman — it is simply im possible to separate the effects of biology from the effects of cultural conditioning. The effects of biology, without question, do determine that women bear and nurse children. The biological argument, how ever, extends this biological determinism to include all asp ects of a woman’s existen ce. Yet, one must ask, is it fair to ignore an individual’s musical talent just becau se sh e will probably grow up and "just get married?” Is there any need to discourage a girl’s ambition to becom e a nuclear physicist in deference to the notion that her children will "need their mother at hom e?” In technologically advanced countries today women live, on the whole, to the a g e of 74. They bear their last child by the a ge of 26. Thus, by the time a woman is 33 or so, her children all have more important things to do with their daytime hours than to spend them entertaining an adult woman who waits for them at home. What is a woman to do to fulfill the secon d half of her life span? The limitations of w om en’s physiology are not at all what the biological argument holds them to be. If anything, the biologically determined realities of modern life would indicate that girls should be prepared for other roles in addition to those of wife and mother. They are not. Research studies have shown that young women give no thought to life after 40. They plan to graduate from high sch ool, perhaps g o to co lle g e and, then, get married. It is not biological imperative, but rather outmoded and sexist social conditioning, which leads them to conduct НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ 1978 25
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