Customer Reviews

Sisterhood is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology

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I disagree with the reader-reviewer from Pittsburgh. If Morgan was an unobjective "female supremacist" then she wouldn't have assembled such a massive copilation of plain hard FACTS. This book exposes worldwide patriarchal systems--including but not limited to organized religions. It's like an encyclopedia on women internationally. I thought it was terrrific, and it changed my outlook on the globe forever. I still dip into it regularly, for reference--and certainly whenever I travel abroad. It's like a Fodor for feminists.

Robin Morgan (born 1941) is a former child actor turned American feminist activist, writer, poet, and editor (Ms. Magazine editor-in-chief from 1989-1993). She was a founding member of New York Radical Women and W.I.T.C.H., and also founded the Women's Media Center. She has written/edited books such as Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement, Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium, The Burning Time, Saturday's Child: A Memoir, etc.

This book contains contributions from 68 nations. Morgan wrote in the 'Prefatory Note' to this 1984 collection, "The women whose articles appear ... are a deliberately eclectic mix: grass-roots organizers, members of parliaments, novelists, scientists, journalists, guerrillas, scholars, poets, former heads of states, women in exile or underground, public feminist spokespersons and 'closet feminists' in international diplomatic circles, activists and theorists, women never before heard from and women already known worldwide. The political spectrum embraces radical feminist, moderate/reform feminist, and socialist feminist, to show as wide as possible a world view of women's activism."

Here are some quotations from the book:

"Not only are females most of the poor, the starving, and the illiterate, but women and children constitute more than 90 percent of all refugee populations." (Pg. 2)
"It is hardly surprising that, country after country, education emerges as the first step in the long journey toward women's freedom." (Pg. 31)
"Feminism was thought to be a Western phenomenon. But an idea's origins, it was agreed, ought not to be the main consideration in one's judgment of its validity." (Pg. 331)
"The greatest enemy of any enlightened society and of freedom for all uman beings---and especially women---is the organized clergy." (Pg. 363)
"...feminism also meets up with an economic and social reality so dramatic that, ironically, it does not allow women from the poorer classes to recognize that they are oppressed AS WOMEN." (Pg. 553)
"The mere fact that feminism appears to have originated in 'developed capitalistic countries' is taken as a main argument against it. It seems that certain ideas are good only because they came from certain parts of the world." (Pg. 736)
"Women, like men, are just ordinary human beings subject to the same temptations when in the position of power." (Pg. 743)

This was a very good source of facts about the situation of women in different countries around the world. It effectively shows how women have it badly in all countries and is a good source for comparative studies. Unfortunately, all the political commentary is tinged by Morgan's extremist anti-religion (except religion placing women first) view. Morgan is the anti-chauvinist, the female supremacist. Buy it for the facts, be wary of the opinions.