Women Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports [Hardcover]

Kate O'Beirne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 29, 2005

A top conservative writer explores the feminist assault on our families, schools, workplaces, and military

As a woman, Kate O’Beirne can say things a male commentator could never get away with. In her long-awaited first book, she takes on America’s leading feminists—including Hillary Clinton, Gloria Steinem, Eleanor Smeal, Maureen Dowd, Kate Michelman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and even Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw. She confronts them with hard evidence of how women like them have done more harm than good over the last four decades.

OÂ’Beirne is all for womenÂ’s equality and celebrates the unprecedented opportunities they enjoy today. But she faults those feminists who believe that a hostile patriarchy reigns and that women remain its helpless victims. Their agenda is not profemale; itÂ’s merely antimale.

Women Who Make the World Worse shows how their destructive handiwork can be felt in every corner of American life, including:
• fractured families and dispensable dads
• offices and schools that have become battlegrounds in the gender wars
• military units that put lives at risk to promote social engineering

This book takes on some very powerful women and challenges beliefs that have become feminist orthodoxy, starting with the myth that men are the enemy of womenÂ’s progress. OÂ’Beirne marshals her allies, prepares for a good fight, and never loses her sense of humor. This is a provocative book that will appeal to anyone, male or female, who wants some old-fashioned common sense about relations between the sexes.

“We depend on manly characteristics to keep us safe. Every single one of the dead firemen heroes on 9/11 were men. This was one group where liberals didn’t ask why there wasn’t a more pleasing gender balance, because the Upper West Side is not fireproof. What happens in combat in some distant field is abstract to liberals, but they can understand the need to have strong, brave men in their fire department.” —Kate O’Beirne

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The satirical cartoon cover of O'Beirne's book-not to mention the title-is an accurate reflection of the content within: O'Beirne, Washington editor of National Review magazine and a former vice president of the Heritage Foundation, has jumped on the bandwagon of highly politicized books (from both ends of the spectrum) leveling an all-out attack on the American feminist movement. O'Beirne tackles a wide range of issues, from childcare to sports to women in the military, claiming: "Only the French looked to a teenage girl to lead them into battle." She has a tendency to link strong arguments (children born into single-family homes are more likely to live in poverty) with her nebulous central thesis-feminists are responsible for the world's ills-without providing sufficient evidence to reinforce these claims. But are feminists really chiefly responsible for the demise of the American family? O'Beirne does bring up some worthy points, such as the fact that women's salaries are essentially equal to men's when accounting for time/job experience lost while raising children, but she tarnishes even her fact-based arguments with slavish adherence to the book's central focus: smearing powerful, left-wing women. The clever chapter titles and argumentative, lively writing style make this book, even for those not inclined to agree with O'Beirne's politics, readable, but O'Beirne's primary readership will undoubtedly enjoy her rousing take on gender politics.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

O'Beirne, an editor with National Review and a former panelist on CNN's Capital Gang, takes the feminist movement to task, charging it with responsibility for assorted social ills from broken families to increased risk to the military with female recruits. She cites some of America's best-known feminists, including Hillary Clinton, Gloria Steinem, Maureen Dowd, Kate Michelman, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Despite defeat of the ERA, these women, and the feminist movement in general, have managed to influence American culture to the detriment of women. Lamenting the "totalitarian" methods of the modern women's movement, O'Beirne maintains that advancements for women should not be credited to the women's movement but to intrepid women--including Catholic school nuns--who were hard at work breaking down barriers without celebration or official causes behind them. O'Beirne catalogs all the ways that feminism has weakened families, coarsened culture, and burdened the government. Readers interested in different perspectives on women's issues will appreciate O'Beirne's strongly held viewpoint. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Sentinel HC (December 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595230092
• ISBN-13: 978-1595230096
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (364 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #744,750 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

111 of 128 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Little of This, A Little of That, March 29, 2006

By 

M. R. Graves (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Women Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports (Hardcover)

The Amazon reviews of this book are perplexing. Either five stars or one? Is it really that polarizing? I read this book, cover to cover, and can honestly say that it's got some good points, some bad points, and some controversial points. One reviewer claims that the scholarship is poor, which is patently untrue; it has copious endnotes and each direct quote is scrupulously documented. Some of the arguments, such as in the wage gap chapter, ARE a bit weak. However, the logic of the Title IX chapter (that non-sports-playing female monority applicants are actually disadvantaged by Title IX in favor of those seeking positions on sports teams) is extremely compelling and should make anyone who is serious about academics uncomfortable with our university system.

Whether you agree or disagree with the premise of this book, PLEASE at least take the time to read it. Most of the reviews here are uninformed polemics and don't help to further rational dialogue.

197 of 237 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Its about modern feminism, not early womens rights., April 15, 2006

By 

James "Collins" (Midland, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Women Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports (Hardcover)

So many people who rate this book as one star claim that Kate is attacking those women who, in the not so distant past, fought rightly for women's equality and that somehow Kate is `stuck in the 50s'. They have not read the book, or refuse to acknowledge the facts, continuing their hypocritical argument that modern feminism is about equality.

Modern day feminism, of course, has nothing to do with equality. It seeks more to elevate women's privileges, rights and interests above and beyond that of what men receive. None of Kates topics are from a time period anywhere near the 50s and I felt the book, and some of its reviews, show how some women are becoming worse than men ever were. These women blatantly discriminate, think they have a right to do so, and are proud of it. There is a big gap between the women's rights movement of the 40s 50s and 60s and of modern day feminism. The negative reviews this book receives has shown how many feminists continue to link today's movement with yesteryears and, somehow, that makes them automatically righteous. These women deserve their own chapter in Kates book `Women who make the world worse'.

It is not difficult to see the effect that these women have had on society. Kate structures her book well and tackles each example with solid, researched information. Government legislation, biased family courts, ignorance towards lagging performance in schools of boys and the feminization of the military, sports, workplace and justice system. The idiocy over the Harvard `incident' was my favorite chapter, illustrating how some women will not accept that men may be better at some things than women, but applaud women who excel beyond boys in a women focused education, work and political system. There's lots of money and jobs out there for women who cry foul when they don't get their own way. Kate is able to highlight just what modern feminists have to lose should men ever get equality. Harvard has been forced to put forward $50 million to fund a new equality department which, headed by a staunch feminist no doubt, will justify it own existence and secure its own funding based on perpetuating female oppression, whether it occurs or not.

Kate does not tackle all of modern feminisms double standards, there certainly are plenty more of them out there, but she does an excellent job of identifying and analyzing the ones that have the most effect on our society. I am glad that some women have a good grasp on the facts of modern day feminism and are able to separate the differences between feminism and equality so effectively. Kate is highlighting not how far women have come, but how far some women have gone. It gives hope for equality....some day.

There is a saying amongst mens rights groups. `Reverse a gender issue and see if it would still be tolerated'. Would women tolerate the treatment men receive in society today?

Of course not. That would be discrimination, wouldn't it?

84 of 102 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful and well-researched, April 18, 2006

By 

DBrooks - See all my reviews

This review is from: Women Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports (Hardcover)

Judging by the many one-star reviews, this book has touched a very sore nerve. It is a sad fact of current society that such a well-written, well-researched, and reasonable book elicits emotional attacks from many who seem not to have actually read it. Many people dislike unpleasant facts that contradict their chosen dogmas. Modern feminism is in many ways a secular religion whose adherents abhor anything critical(factual or otherwise)of their raison d'etre. O'Beirne exposes them for what they are. If you are interested in a fact-based exposition of feminism, I highly recommend this book.