Natasha Walter

I felt this was a bit dense, covering much information that I was already familiar with, but perhaps to someone not aware of the women's plight in society, or looking for an introduction to feminism, this would be a suitable starting point. There were several points made about women's liberation and their value in society at large, based on sexual appeal, and although this has meant to be freeing, has actually just constrained women in a new social role. "This objectified woman, so often celebrated as the wife or girlfriend of the heroic male rather than the heroine of her own life, is the living doll who has replaced the liberated woman who should be making her way into the twenty-first century." Exploring questions of what choice truly means within the context of women's daily lives, and expelling many of the myths of faulty experiments citing genetic difference, rather than environmental and societal influences in the constraints that are still placed upon women at large.… (plus d'informations)

Being already familiar with the claims of feminism in the current age, I was not nearly as enamored of this book as I was hoping to be. I thought it might blow my mind, but there was not much here that I hadn't already been exposed to. The book ranges from the sex industry to the childhood toy industry to our myths and stereotypes about masculinity and femininity being natural.

The most interesting section to me were the sociology studies. For instance, a 1999 study that found that when men and women were given math tests and told there was a gender gap on the test or told nothing at all, the gender gap was replicated in the results. When given math tests and told there was no gender gap, the gender gap on the test disappeared. This indicates that women perform badly in math because they are expected to perform badly -- even by themselves -- not because there is a true gap in skills. Another study looked at facial expressions on groupmates when trained male and female leaders behaved in exactly the same way, and found that women leaders received a greater number of "disgust" faces -- an unpleasant experience that helps to explain, perhaps, why women don't go more frequently into public leadership positions.

This is a book from the UK (which I wish I'd known earlier, because that makes it even less directly relevant to my situation), and some of the assumed knowledge was also interesting to me. For instance, apparently British women get up to a year of maternity leave, whereas men get a maximum of two weeks. What crazy systems we build ourselves....

I'm assigning a low-ish star rating for its impact on me, not for the quality of information or the presentation of the book itself. This is a book well recommended for people who do believe that sexism is mostly behind us.… (plus d'informations)