Women vs Feminism: Why We All Need Liberating from the Gender Wars

Joanna Williams
Kent University, UK


Product Details
Format:
Paperback
ISBN:
9781787144767
Published:
Publisher:
Emerald Publishing Limited
Dimensions:
336 pages - 138 x 216mm
List price £17.99 List price €20.99 List price $31.99
Categories:
There’s never been a better time to be a woman. Thanks to those feminists who fought for liberation, young women today have freedom and opportunities their grandmothers could barely have imagined. Girls do better at school than boys and are more likely to go to university. As a result, women are taking more of the top jobs and the gender pay gap has all but disappeared. Yet rather than encouraging women to seize the new possibilities open to them, contemporary feminism tells them they are still oppressed. 

Women vs Feminism: Why We All Need Liberating from the Gender Wars challenges this stance, unpicking the statistics from the horror stories to explore the reality of women’s lives. It argues that today’s feminism is obsessed with trivial issues – skinny models, badly phrased jokes and misplaced compliments – and focuses on the regulation of male behaviour, rather than female empowerment, pitching men and women against each other in a never-ending gender war that benefits no-one. 

Feminism today does women no favours and it’s time we were all liberated from the gender wars.

Part One: Women’s Lives Today 
Chapter 1, Schooling for Success
Chapter 2, Women at Work
Chapter 3, The Gender Pay Gap
Chapter 4, The Motherhood Penalty 
Part Two: Private Relationships, Public Concerns 
Chapter 5, Victors or Victims?
Chapter 6, Sex and Relationships
Chapter 7, The Trouble With Boys
Part Three: Feminism Then and Now 
Chapter 8, Not Your Grandmother’s Feminism
Chapter 9, The Personal is Political
Chapter 10, Being a Woman
Conclusions, Do We Still Need Feminism?
Joanna Williams is Senior Lecturer at the University of Kent and is the author of Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity and Consuming Higher Education: Why Learning Can’t Be Bought. She is education editor of the online magazine Spiked, a frequent contributor to The Spectator, and has written for numerous other publications from the Times Higher Education to the Erotic Review.
"refreshing and engaging" - Times Literary Supplement

The joy of reading Joanna Williams's writing is that you quickly realize that she represents a rare combination. She knows her feminist theory inside out, and yet she also sees immediately where contemporary feminism becomes misguided and pernicious.

- The Conservative Woman

"A thoughtful critique of modern feminism." - The Quarterly Review

"For those of us who've been involved in fighting for women's liberation for years, it has been tragic to watch contemporary feminism become the enemy of freedom. Do not despair. Joanna Williams's wonderful book not only uses erudition, philosophy and polemics to explain how on earth this betrayal has happened but more importantly it is a bravura clarion call urging women to throw off the shackles of hapless victimhood and instead take control of their destiny. I loved every word." - Claire Fox, Director, Institute of Ideas

"Women vs Feminism is a superb exposé of today's victim feminism. It tells the story of how a once valiant movement for equality and freedom devolved into a male-bashing grievance-fest. This meticulously researched book will drive the gender activists crazy--and delight those who care about truth, rules of evidence, and genuine liberation." - Christina Hoff Sommers, Author of Who Stole Feminism?

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