Dish: Midlife Women Tell the Truth About Work, Relationships, and the Rest of Life

Louise Karch is a career consultant with Carswell Partners in London, Ontario.

Sex in the City meets career/life planning as Barbara Moses mines her
own life, 1,000 email questionnaire responses, and remarks from her
seminar participants and online Career Advisor tool in order to analyse
women’s lives at mid-life. “Never before,” she writes, “have
there been so many demands on women to excel in so many areas of life,
so many opportunities for self-expression and success, for
disappointment and frustration.” The author feels that it is
imperative for mid-life women to focus on what they really want and care
about. If they fail to do so, “they will continue to play out old
scripts, scripts about what we should do, how we should behave, what we
should be happy with.”

Moses is a columnist with The Globe and Mail. Her accessible and
crisply written fourth book makes for a rich read as it profiles women
who have navigated the ups and downs of corporate life, motherhood,
childlessness, and a broad range of relationships. Among the book’s
fascinating insights is the finding that “older women soared above
other groups in decoding whether they were being presented with truth or
lies.”

The profiles are limited by the absence of contributions from the
working poor, Native women, recent immigrants, and women with
disabilities. And while there are references listed for each chapter in
the appendix, the numbered references do not appear in the text. Caveats
aside, Dish is a refreshing and honest look at the realities confronting
working women today.