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Sex and Power Hardcover – October 2, 2000

by Susan Estrich (Author)

10

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A hard-hitting look at power dynamics from the first female president of the Harvard Law Review and the author of Making the Case for Yourself offers deep insight into the sexual divide in American culture and politics. 40,000 first printing.

Print length

256 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Riverhead Hardcover
Publication date

October 2, 2000
Reading age

18 years and up
Dimensions

5.76 x 1.02 x 9.02 inches
ISBN-10

1573221244
ISBN-13

978-1573221245
See all details

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

How powerful are American women? To answer that question, Susan Estrich offers two facts: 99.94 percent of the CEOs and 97.3 percent of the top earners in America are men. Concerned about these numbers and the recent rise in women dropping out of the fast lane, or choosing not to enter at all, one of America's most powerful women has written a compelling argument for a restructuring of the workplace and a rallying cry to women to stand together for change. This is not a condemnation of male discrimination, however. Estrich believes that both men and women make unconsciously biased decisions based on socialization. (Most women, after all, are just as wary of ambitious women as men; hence the Hillary phenomenon.) No, Estrich's goal is to inspire. She reminds her readers repeatedly that American women actually have more access to power than any other group of women in the world (after all, they make 83 percent of consumer purchases and comprise 51 percent of the electorate)--but they need to choose to use it. She cites examples of remarkable things that have happened when only two or three women in positions of power have stood together. Imagine what America might look like if half the nation's leaders were women. Would the schools be better? Would video games be less violent? Would more doors be open to women returning to the workforce?

It is this latter group that Estrich is most concerned about. She uses her insider's perspective as a feminist lawyer, along with her access to presidents, ambassadors, editors, and other powerful people, to give both an objective and a personal history of women's struggles for equal rights. This openly frank discussion ranges from Supreme Court battles and feminists' own conflicting views to the thorny issue of sexual harassment (including the author's own role in the Paula Jones and Anita Hill cases). Estrich concludes that women (and men) don't just need equality, they need change. Mothers cannot compete in the workplace as currently designed, and despite so-called gender rules, the working world is still stacked against women. In a daring move, Estrich declares that "the debate has to move beyond questions of conscious discrimination, of who did what to whom, to the more important challenge of how we include everyone at the table." In other words, antidiscrimination laws should not simply end at intentional discrimination, but should actually encourage inclusion. That indeed will require finishing the feminist revolution, which is Estrich's greatest hope. --Lesley Reed

From Publishers Weekly

The lack of women in top political and business spots is emblematic of the unfinished feminist revolution, declares Estrich, presidential campaign manager for Michael Dukakis, a noted law professor (University of Southern California) and newspaper columnist, and author of Real Rape. She highlights how much has changed for women who have entered institutions previously closed to them, yet how little has changed in the structures of those institutions. Outlining the legal cases that have promoted women's equality, Estrich observes, "Enforcing equality in an unequal world doesn't produce equal results." Successful women in formerly all-male fields are still extraordinary people, she argues, which means that ordinary women don't succeed where ordinary men do. Facts and stereotypes about motherhood hold back all women, she contends, exhorting women in positions of power to use that power to support other women: "if gender enters into [women's] evaluation, as we know it does, that doesn't change by ignoring it, but by recognizing the reality and acting collectively to respond to it." The corporations that are most women-friendly have become that way through a conscious decision-making process, Estrich points out. Publicity about the woefully low number of women on corporate boards of directors has also led to some increase in those numbers. Estrich's argument will appeal most to those who believe that the kind of social change she proposes will come from the top down. That her message isn't new emphasizes the importance, and perhaps the truth, of what she has to say. Agent, Amanda Urban, ICM. Author tour. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Riverhead Hardcover (October 2, 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1573221244
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1573221245
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.76 x 1.02 x 9.02 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #7,641,724 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #11,968 in Feminist Theory (Books)
- #266,258 in Politics & Government (Books)

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Wanda B. Red

Still Flailing after All These Years

Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2012

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I missed this book when it came out, more than ten years ago. Reading it today, in 2012, I can't help but find some of the contemporary references (e.g., to the Gore presidential campaign or the emphasis on the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal) a little dated. More startling, however, the underlying points still feel quite timely a decade later. We still do not have significant numbers of women in the boardrooms or top echelons of business and politics, and women are still battling about how much personal ambition is desirable for a successful and balanced life (see recent controversies over Sheryl Sandberg's exhortations to young women that they should embrace professional ambition). Women compose an ever larger percentage of each college and professional school graduating class without advancing proportionally to the top of their chosen careers.

Estrich's "Sex and Power" presents the advancement of women as a task to be taken on personally, woman by woman. Her argument suggests that the legal and structural battles had largely been won at the time of the book's writing. "Know that the law is on your side . . ., that we have already changed the world , and all we have to do is finish the job," she writes. The fact that so little progress has been made in the past ten years, however, suggests that perhaps this is not the case. Even now, not everyone is convinced that there should be a revolution, and it may well be that the structures to facilitate equality of the sexes are not truly in place. Subsequent history suggests that there was a little too much complacency in this book.

But Estrich's story is a fascinating one. Blurbs focus on her important firsts: She was the first woman editor of the Harvard Law Review, the first tenured woman at the Harvard Law School, and the first woman to run a presidential campaign. She is also a complicated and contradictory figure, the author of a book about rape (based on a harrowing personal experience, discussed in this volume as well) and a diet book (which she mentions briefly). Although a committed Democrat and liberal commentator, she is also a regular contributor on the conservative Fox News network. Correspondingly, a strength of this book is that she faces up to these contradictions even if she can't always resolve them, which gives her analysis texture and complexity. She urges other women to be more ruthless than she has been, while clearly taking pride in the principles that restrained her ambition, and she acknowledges that some of the advances she has championed have their unfortunate and unintended consequences. It may be that the women's movement will need to come to deeper terms with these contradictions and make their peace with them more fully before more significant progress can be made in the corridors of power.

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Dennis Littrell

Feminism at the highest level

Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2001

This is a splendid book and Susan Estrich is a very sophisticated person, the kind of person who judges each case on its individual merits. Thus she could be for Anita Hill and against Monica Lewinsky. She is also the kind of person who is exquisitely sensitive to political power and its exercise, a person who knows both the importance and the limitations of political correctness. Thus she can defend Bill Clinton and find fault with Al Gore. She is also a terrific writer who can be vivid, candid, self-expressive and revealing, and very sharp with what she finds unacceptable. Thus she can lecture women on the necessity to speak up when they feel harassed or overlooked for promotion while recognizing that the "nuts and sluts defense" to rape (her coinage) sometimes has validity. She is not the kind of person you can pigeon hole. Thus she can write a book about Sex and Power that really is about sex and power, with herself as participant from her experience at the Harvard Law School and within the Democratic party at the highest level, a friend of both Hillary and Bill Clinton, to being a victim of an ice pick rapist. She can brag about her legs (p. 207) and admit that she calls her interns "sweetie," touches them and has them run for coffee (p. 191) while making the most cogent arguments about the reality of sexual harassment in the workplace and how it harms both women and men. She can be as political as the wiliest pol as she references a goody portion of the pantheon of feminist writers from Christina Hoff Sommers to Catharine A. MacKinnon, usually without letting us know where she might agree or disagree with them.
She begins with the observation that despite great strides made by women toward complete equality in our society there is still a tremendous disparity in the number of men and women in the top positions in corporate America, in the law, and in academia. Estrich makes this clear beyond any shadow of a doubt as she cites the numbers. The question is why. The implication is that sex discrimination is still rampant at the top and the old boy's network and conspiracy just as intrenched as ever. However, a more careful interpretation of the very statistics and observations that Estrich uses suggests that it is not sex discrimination alone that accounts for the lack of women at the top of Fortune 500 companies, but something else.
Call it smarts; not the lack of intelligence, but the possession of it.
The plain fact of the matter is that women have wisely chosen to put themselves and their families first, the pursuit of power and superfluous wealth a distant second. Estrich has not. That is her choice, and she wears it well, but it is not for everyone, or even for more than some of us.
Estrich understands this. She has managed a splendid career, but she hasn't given up motherhood to do it. She has a family, a son and a daughter. She argues that women have to be extraordinary to receive the same pay and rise to the same level as men. She laments that some women don't want to rise to the top, and she chides her sisters who have risen for not helping other women climb the corporate ladder, wisely pointing out that women together weld more power than a woman alone. She presents an agenda for "Changing the Face of Corporate America" (Chapter 7) by overcoming "Motherhood as Destiny" (Chapter 5) and easing the old boys off their "Comfort Factor" (Chapter 6).
What I think she may not completely understand is that women in general gain no reproductive advantage by being in positions of power. Men do. In fact the pursuit of power by men is largely motivated by a semi-conscious desire to maximize their reproductive power. In today's world this may not work as well as it once did, but the desire is still there within the male psyche, to some extent an evolutionary hangover. Even today with the extra money a man might make he can afford a second marriage and a second family, whereas a man of more modest means cannot. He can afford a mistress. In previously times, of course, he could, if he accumulated enough power and resources, acquire a whole harem. A woman, however, can gain a reproductive advantage only by conceiving and giving birth to and raising more children. Therein lies part of the reason that many women are not buying into the "success at any cost" mentality that corporations demand of their top executives.
In the latter part of the book, Estrich focuses on sex and political power, per se. She acknowledges "the route to power when all others are closed," when a woman may, like the "great dames," use her sexuality (p. 206). But she warns, "sexuality takes you only so far. You don't run the world when you're on your knees" (p. 207).
She ends the book with a clarion call to feminism and a tribute to what feminism did for her. She laments the fact that many women today are choosing to be selfish and pursue their personal interests and needs before the "mission," as she calls it on page 265.
Estrich writes with great fluidity and power. She has the ability to express herself so that one understands every word. She cites statistics and spins stories in a way that makes her points vivid and the implications and impacts clear and accessible with little effort on the part of the reader. She is a great spokesperson for women's rights and feminist issues and she is someone to look up to and admire.

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Marion E. Gold

Sex, power & "personal publicity" all play a role...

Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2002

Estrich makes some very good points in this book, but leaves one critical factor out. Women who do make it to the top not only don't mentor other women - they forget to put a little "personal publicity" into their career plans! It's always the "first woman" here, and the "first woman" there. Being first only lasts as long as making the "first mistake" which also hits the business page headlines. Achieving corporate and community visibility needs a consistent and planned effort. To really take charge of your career, whether you are still climbing the so-called ladder, or have reached the top rungs - there is no substitute for creating a strategic 'personal' publicity plan. Your boss won't do it, and neither will your mentor (if you have one!). It is up to YOU. People have to know who you are, what you stand for, and why they should hire you, promote you, or do business with you. That's really taking charge of your career.

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Sex and Power Hardcover – October 2, 2000

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