From Publishers Weekly
Men's tendency to subjugate and abuse women operates on personal, institutional and cultural levels, notes novelist and feminist French ( Beyond Power ). Boys' desire to dominate girls is instilled in childhood, while grown men see women as mothers owing them caretaking services, she observes. In her sharp analysis a major goal of male-conceived religious movements like Christian fundamentalism and militant Islam is to keep women subservient. Other examples of institutional suppression of women explored by French are discrimination in the workplace, biased divorce judgments and widespread rape, wife beating and male incest, a systemic pattern tolerated by society. On the cultural front she examines male sadomasochism against women in the arts and advertising. A landmark in feminist analysis, this powerful indictment reveals the global extent of men's assault on women, drawing implicit connections between the drive to criminalize abortion, starvation wages paid to women by transnational corporations, genital mutilation in Africa, Third World brothel tours and sociobiology's characterization of male aggression as normal, female aggression as nonadaptive. Author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
French (author of the groundbreaking novel The Women's Room , LJ 11/15/77) states what she is about in her title. This exhausting, horrifying, and deeply saddening compendium catalogs religious, sociological, institutional, and physical oppression of women throughout the world. While it is extensively footnoted, French's essays are focused toward raising readers' consciousness of legal and political strictures; statistics on rape, incest, female infanticide, and clitoridectomy; and male obsession with controlling female reproduction. Little of what is contained here will be news to any conscientious reader of Ms . magazine. One wonders who French perceives as her audience, as most feminists are probably aware of the global difficulites faced by women, and those who would not take on the feminist designation may simply dismiss her arguments. Although much shorter than Susan Faludi's extraordinary Backlash ( LJ 9/15/91; an LJ "Best Book of 1991"), which took aim primarily at media manipulation, French's book is less accessible and more demanding of readers. For academic collections, and public libraries where interest warrants. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/91.
- GraceAnne A. DeCandido, "School Library Journal"Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
