A balancing act: a collection of short stories in an examination of how women write

The purpose of this study is to examine, through the creation of a collection of short stories, the problems that women must overcome in order to produce literature.

Procedures followed in this study included the review of essays by prominent feminist scholars who have documented the personal and societal conflicts confronting women who write, and the writing of short stories which illustrate these hardships. Major sources of information included the studies of Virginia Woolf, Tillie Olsen, and Joanna Russ. These works, along with the comments of other female writers, were examined to determine how sexual barriers have historically restricted women writers and how they affect the writings of modern women. The techniques employed by successful women writers were applied in the creation of this author's fiction, a series of stories each illustrating the woman's quest for self-fulfillment.

This study concludes that women, still confronting personal and societal restrictions in the creation of their literature, have redefined the concept of universality and have developed various writing techniques in order to produce fiction that uniquely and creatively explores the importance of a woman's experiences.