Heading Home

Heading Home reveals the stark gap between the promise of gender equality and women’s experience of continued injustice. It draws on in-depth interviews with highly educated London women who left paid employment to take care of their children, juxtaposed with media and policy depictions of women, work, and family.

Orgad Shani :

Shani Orgad is an associate professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is the author of Media Representation and the Global Imagination (Polity, 2012) and Storytelling Online: Talking Breast Cancer and the Internet (Peter Lang, 2005).Shani Orgad is associate professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is the author of Storytelling Online: Talking Breast Cancer on the Internet (2005), Media Representation and the Global Imagination (2012), and Caring in Crisis? Humanitarianism, the Public and NGOs (2017, with Bruna Seu).

Melissa A. Milkie, University of Toronto:
In this rich and compelling book, Shani Orgad persuasively argues for the power of cultural forces, alongside toxic workplace structures and flimsy public policies, to block pathways, shrink selves, and stifle rage among accomplished, highly-educated women who sacrificed careers as they headed home to care for young children. She beautifully weaves the sometimes-wrenching stories of mothers with incisive analysis demarcating the unique predicament of these mothers, who find it difficult to articulate return pathways to the work world despite the celebratory and contradictory culture of mompreneurs and the confidence fantasy. Brilliant!

Dafna Lemish, Rutgers University:
Heading Home is a wonderfully researched and written book, highly engaging, and on a hugely important topic. Orgad’s interviews highlight very meaningful themes: the fact that oppression can be experienced alongside privilege; that structural inequality masks what are perceived as personal choices; and how the public discourses and media representations of ‘choice’ shape the self-identity of women who in fact did not have much of a choice. A great accomplishment!

Richard Sennett, author of The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism:
This book tells a story about sacrificing career for family that resonates far beyond the lives of the women in London Shani Orgad has interviewed. Orgad makes a powerful argument about the denials women experience, precisely because the author does not rant. She is a gifted explorer of adulthood in all its promises, twists, and disappointments. Shani Orgad is one of the finest sociologists of her generation.