Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Far from being ``liberated,'' American women in the 1980s were victims of a powerful backlash against the handful of small, hard-won victories the feminist movement had achieved, says Wall Street Journal reporter Faludi, who won a Pulitzer this year. Buttressing her argument with facts and statistics, she states that the alleged ``man shortage'' endangering women's chances of marrying (posited by a Harvard-Yale study) and the ``infertility epidemic'' said to strike professional women who postpone childbearing are largely media inventions. She finds evidence of antifeminist backlash in Hollywood movies, in TV's thirtysomething , in 1980s fashion ads featuring battered models and in the New Right's attack on women's rights. She directs withering commentary at Robert Bly's all-male workshops, Allan Bloom's ``prolonged rant'' against women and Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer's revisionism. This eloquent, brilliantly argued book should be read by everyone concerned about gender equality. First serial to Glamour and Mother Jones. (Nov.)
Library Journal
Faludi, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Wall Street Journal , marshals in a sustained and excoriating 500-plus pages what many thoughtful women already know: it isn't that the goals of the feminist movement have failed, but that they have not yet been tried. Placing the current backlash against women squarely in a historical context (in the 19th century so-called experts told women that education would atrophy their wombs), she debunks the shoddy scholarship and half-truths that produced the myths we hear today: that women are fleeing the workplace to stay home and ``cocoon''; that their chances of marrying diminish greatly if they don't marry young; that their lack of advancement is their own fault. She argues that women's anger and resentment are not due to their feminism, but occur because women have not yet been the beneficiaries of the justice, fairness, and equity they deserve. Along the way, Faludi demolishes the anti-feminist agendas of Robert Bly's ``wild men,'' Allan Bloom ( Closing of the American Mind , LJ 5/1/87), and George Gilder ( Sexual Suicide , LJ 8/73), among others. This is most important book.-- GraceAnne A. DeCandido, ``School Library Journal''
Library Journal
Faludi's 1991 best seller got down and dirty with all the antifeminism backlash that she asserted was still keeping women second-class citizens in the work force and in greater society in general. The younger generation perhaps isn't as interested in feminism as their mothers, and Faludi's new introduction points out that while women have been able to "achieve economic goals, we have yet to find a way to turn those gains toward the larger and more meaningful goals of social change, responsible citizenship, the advancement of human creativity, and the building of a mature and vital public world." Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Booknews
Reprint of the Crown Publishers edition of 1991. Unaugmented. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Kirkus Reviews
The Pulitzer-winning journalist (The Wall Street Journal, Ms., The Miami Herald) explores the real status of American women in the 90's in this powerful and long-overdue myth-buster—an instant classic and a valuable companion to Paula Kamen's Feminist Fatale (reviewed below). College-educated women over 30 are more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to marry. Working women enjoy their careers at the expense of their children's welfare. If you're female, you can't really have it all. So go the modern myths that were born in the 80's, despite the era's supposedly "liberated" image, and that have terrorized American women ever since. The trouble, claims Faludi, is not only that the myths aren't true, but that through deliberate action or passive collusion the government, media, and popular culture have ensured their overpowering influence on the public. Her interest sparked by her discovery that the Harvard-Yale marriage-for-women-over-30 study was based on very shaky methodology, but that there was resistance in both the media and government to correcting its conclusions, Faludi went on to uncover the unacknowledged but frighteningly widespread backlash against feminism that has taken place under the surface of 80's careerism. Taking the reader step by step through the creation of wildly anti- feminist 80's myths and backlashes in popular culture (Fatal Attraction, the "New Traditionalism," the new "feminine" fashions); in politics (reproductive rights, the female New Right); in popular psychology ("to improve your marriage, change yourself"); in the workplace (lack of day care, parental leave, the wage gap); and in health (white career women's supposed sterility vs. blackwomen's actual, unaddressed, sterility problem), Faludi convincingly peels back layers of deliberate and passive misrepresentation to reveal what she sees as the underlying message of the Reagan-Bush era: Women's problems are a direct result of too much independence, and no one but feminists are to blame. Historically, backlashes have always followed feminist gains, Faludi points out; the necessity is to see behind today's hip "postfeminist" apathy to the injustices still being done. Brilliant reportage, with all the details in place—a stunning debut.
