Book description
The women's movement has transformed British society since the 1960s.
In this contentious and controversial book leading feminist writer Ros
Coward asks, is it now holding us back?
When women set out to change the world and their place in it in the
1960s and 1970s it seemed they had a long struggle ahead. Educational
standards for girls were lower, they were not expected to take on
serious jobs, women did not get paid as much as men in identical jobs,
they were not given maternity provision (not least because they were not
expected to work after getting married, let alone having children).
Women's health was not researched as thoroughly as men's, there were few
women doctors, politicians, senior managers…
Within a generation, our world has been transformed into one in which
women are assumed to be the equals of men. Indeed, many feminists
continue to argue that women are superior to men. But in a world in
which girls consistently attain better exam results than boys, achieve a
higher percentage of university places, are more likely to get jobs and
whose expectations - of flexible working lives - are more attuned to the
needs of the modern workplace, such a suggestion seems as discriminatory
as the world of the 1960s was to women.
In this controversial, hard-hitting and myth-debunking book, Ros Coward
looks at feminism's achievements and asks that most un-PC of questions:
do we need feminism any more? Or is it damaging of real relations
between men and women, demonizing men and denying them the right to
understanding and equality in a world that is harsher for them than ever
before? Ros Coward is the author of Female Desire and Our Treacherous
Hearts. She writes a weekly column in the Guardian.
