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Essential Books for Women

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Brown Eyes:

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This is an interesting one that my Mom found really, really interesting at the time that it was published.  I remember her talking about this book quite a lot around the time it was released in 1991.

Here's the synopsis from Amazon:

"Amazon.com Review
A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Faludi lays out a two-fold thesis in this aggressive work: First, despite the opinions of pop-psychologists and the mainstream media, career-minded women are generally not husband-starved loners on the verge of nervous breakdowns. Secondly, such beliefs are nothing more than anti-feminist propaganda pumped out by conservative research organizations with clear-cut ulterior motives. This backlash against the women's movement, she writes, "stands the truth boldly on its head and proclaims that the very steps that have elevated women's positions have actually led to their downfall." Meticulously researched, Faludi's contribution to this tumultuous debate is monumental and it earned the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction.

From Publishers 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.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.."

magicmountain:
I remember being mightily impressed with this book (Our Treacherous Hearts - Why women let men get their way) by Rosalind Coward) when it first came out.

serious crayons:
Sounds interesting, Jo. What do you remember about what it said? Why do women let men get their way?

magicmountain:

--- Quote from: serious crayons on February 05, 2009, 09:00:50 pm ---Sounds interesting, Jo. What do you remember about what it said? Why do women let men get their way?


--- End quote ---

Too much water under the bridge for me to remember in detail. All I know is I kept re-reading it and recommending it to others at the time. The blurb at amazon summarises: "This book looks at women's collusion with what feminists call male oppression."

I dunno - maybe we're just soft hearted or just soft in the head lol.

Brown Eyes:
Heya!
It's nice to see this thread revived! :)

OK, so I'm going to post one that almost goes without saying or may seem a bit obvious... All the same, it really, truly is a must read for women interested in gender issues, women's rights, feminism, etc... and even women's history.

Simone De Beauvoir
The Second Sex (first published in France in 1949)

It's divided into the following sections/chapters:

1) Destiny
-The Data of Biology
-The Psychoanalytic Point of View
-The Point of View of Histrorical Materialism

2) History
- The Nomads
- Early Tillers of the Soil
- Patriarchal Times and Classical Antiquity
- Through the Middle Ages to 18th Century France

3) Myths
-Dreams, Fears, Idols
-The Myth of 'Woman' in Five Authors
    -Montherlant: or the Bread of Disgust
    -D.H. Lawrence or Phallic Pride
    -Claudel and the Handmaid of the Lord
    -Breton or Poetry
    -Stendhal or the Romantic or Reality
    -Summary
-Myth and Reality

4) The Formative Years
-Childhood
-The Young Girl
-Sexual Initiation
-The Lesbian

5) Situation
-The Married Woman
-The Mother
- Social Life
- Prostitutes and Hetairas
- From Maturity to Old Age
- Woman's Situation and Character

6) Justifications
- The Narcissist
- The Woman in Love
- The Mystic

7) Toward Liberation
- The Independent Woman



It's a very complex and somewhat difficult book to read... but her writing style is actually very readable in many instances.  It's just such a smart book.  It is of course also a bit "out dated" or "of its time."  But, still, it's brilliant enough to inspire awe in many parts.  She was also bold enough and forward enough to include a chapter about lesbians, which simply as a gesture (and especially given De Beauvoir's time period) is something I appreciate.

 

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