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4.08 AVERAGE
4.08 AVERAGE
emotional
informative
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
In this book, you’ll meet the working-class suffragettes who advocated bombings and arson; the princess who discovered why so many women were having bad sex; the pioneer of the refuge movement who became a men’s rights activist; the ‘striker in a sari’ who terrified Margaret Thatcher; the wronged Victorian wife who definitely wasn’t sleeping with the prime minister; and the lesbian politician who outraged the country. Taking the story up to the present with the twenty-first-century campaign for abortion services, Helen Lewis reveals the unvarnished – and unfinished – history of women’s rights.
Drawing on archival research and interviews, Difficult Women is a funny, fearless and sometimes shocking narrative history, which shows why the feminist movement has succeeded – and what it should do next. The battle is difficult, and we must be difficult too.
To begin with I will admit that I thought this book would be giving me a collection of feminists who had different ideals regarding the term feminism and how they made a stamp on history in their own way.
What I got? An insightful look into how feminism has layers of different women with different beliefs that don't always link together - see Erin Pizzy - how feminism has changed with the times, become 'waves' due to these changes and how white cis-women shouldn't be the only one's to be hailed so highly when there are so many people out their working just as hard.
Of course while learning about past history, the right to vote being a big one, along with women getting the right to play football after the war when the men came back, along with women playing other sports that don't think too highly of them compared to their male counterparts - think of that time Andy Murray was asked a question where he had to remind the reporter that Serena Williams had won many more times than him - which is still going on today, even though it's not being stopped, it's not getting the same amount of support from broadcasters to make it more well known for people to easily watch. each chapter does focus on a certain feminist, but it's not solely about them, there are links to many other women, and indeed some men, who are doing their best to let women be heard, to get the chance to vote, to get people with disabilities the right to vote, abortion laws to name a few.
There is also talk about why feminists don't talk about men's rights, issues that men go through, like abuse in a relationship which can be; as it is with women; physical and mental. Yet the issue with this is, and the author points this out, is that yes women are looking out for their own, but then you also have Men's Rights Activists out there too, so what are they doing to get these men the help they need, the support they need? Why does it always have to be the women who need to prop them up and aid them?
It's insightful listening, a learning opportunity considering there are some women that you aren't going to hear about in some feminist books because the women aren't regarding as good feminists, or they don't stand for what they think they should have stood for. When really feminism is forever evolving, it's changing as society changes, it's becoming more than what it started out as, and that's always a good thing It's also why this book isn't complete, because it likely never will be complete, there is so much to do and it's unlikely to finish any time soon.