The Mismeasure of Woman Reprint Edition

by Carol Tavris (Author)

16 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0671797492

ISBN-10: 0671797492

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When "man is the measure of all things," woman is forever trying to measure up. In this enlightening book, Carol Tavris unmasks the widespread but invisible custom -- pervasive in the social sciences, medicine, law, and history -- of treating men as the normal standard, women as abnormal. Tavris expands our vision of normalcy by illuminating the similarities between women and men and showing that the real differences lie not in gender, but in power, resources, and life experiences.
Winner of the American Association for Applied and Preventive Psychology's Distinguished Media Contribution Award

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Editorial Reviews

Review

Susan Faludi author of Backlash Tavris' bracing insights...demonstrate that women are measuring themselves with a rigged yardstick -- one designed to measure (and exaggerate) the stature of men.

Harriet Goldhor Lerner, Ph.D. author of The Dance of Anger Original, provocative, and utterly fascinating, this splendid book will change profoundly the way we think about the sexes -- and sex differences.

Sam Keen author of Fire in the Belly By destroying destructive myths about the inferiority and superiority of women, The Mismeasure of Woman provides the ground for a new dialogue between men and women.

Booklist What Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique did to raise the social consciousness of women, Tavris' book is certain to do for the public awareness of medical and mental health issues as they affect women....Captivating and well documented.

The New York Times Book Review [Written with] wit, erudition, and moderation....The great virtue of this book is that its author never confuses the very real differences in women's and men's experiences -- pregnancy and childbearing being the most obvious -- with the cultural artifacts surrounding these undeniable facts of life.

Toronto Globe and Mail By examining with microscopic attention everything from PMS to sexual abuse survivor groups, from the G spot to theories about women, war and peace, Tavris makes just about everyone pretty uncomfortable. Many sacred cows are brought to their knees if not to actual slaughter; all the emperors and a few empresses turn out to be, well, naked.

Susan Faludi (author of Backlash), in the San Francisco Chronicle In the good humored and commonsense approach that has typified her work, Tavris shows how both men and women use dubious standards of measure....[Women can start to change] by arming themselves with Tavris' bracing insights.

Publishers Weekly A valuable, enlightening roadmap to sanity for women and men.

Kirkus Reviews The author's unusual ability to winnow out deeply embedded errors in thinking makes this an especially important, stimulating, and timely work.

Philadelphia Inquirer Tavris' lucid analysis is sharpened by a wit that punctures the pretensions of "experts."...This provocative book covers an impressive range of topics [and is] a thoughtful, challenging contribution to the debate on gender and its social meaning -- a humane plea for understanding between men and women.

About the Author

Carol Tavris, Ph.D., is a social psychologist, lecturer, and writer on many aspects of psychology. Her books include Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion. Tavris is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

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Product details

Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Touchstone; Reprint edition (February 26, 1993)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0671797492
ISBN-13: 978-0671797492
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1 x 8.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 16 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #838,973 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1513 in Gender Studies (Books)
- #2307 in General Gender Studies
- #8916 in Women's Studies (Books)

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Myrcell

Impossibly eloquent, eye opening and informative

April 24, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I have always been a reluctant feminist. Not because I don't believe in the rights and abilities of my sex, but because the term feminist has been adopted by a specific breed of combative, stereotyping, angry women, who I have nothing in common with. The concept of female superiority, enjoyable as it may seem on first glance, feels just as false as the concept of male superiority. I loved this book because it endorses a school of feminism that accepts the differences between the sexes, and seeks to make the world fair to both. Tavris backs up her arguments with facts, research and an obvious grasp of the historical precedent. What sets the book apart is her wry humor. Without it, Mismeasure of Woman would be yet another dense scholarly text. With it, the book is a well thought out handbook to the idiosyncrasies of the role of women in the modern world.

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David B. Riggins

A case for real equality

November 4, 2000

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I read this book for a class on gender issues in the workplace. Tavris has done a thoughtful and thought-provoking job of bringing out the reality of a world measured in single sex terms, whether it be male or female. What needs to be done, and it isn't easy, is to remember to look at as many sides of an issue, as many definitions of a concept, as possible. We have a tendancy to look at things via absolutes: "I am depressed because my cat died." When in fact there are a multitude of reasons and motivations behind the things we do. And finally, to remember that the best way to create equality is not to first create inequality on one side in order to "balance out" past inequality on the other. I was brought up with the simplistic but nonetheless true maxim that "two wrongs do not make a right." Tavris states the same thing in a much more eloquent and profound way.

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M. A. Krul

Excellent study of sexism and double standards

September 11, 2008

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

The subtitle says it all: Carol Tavris' book "The Mismeasure of Woman" is about why women are not the better sex, or the inferior sex, or the opposite sex. In particular the last bit plays a major role, as Tavris analyzes the various explicit or implicit ways in which sexism is pervasive by taking males as a default or standard for all of humanity. She goes effectively into many examples of this phenomenon, such as medical testing that tests only on men, men as standard in civil law, men as standard in psychology, etc.

Tavris makes a clear case about the truth of physiological differences between men and women, and their importance in socio-economic contexts in everything from toilets to employment, while at the same time stressing the untruth of many of the pop psychological assumptions about the 'mental' differences between men and women, which experiments in social psychology have disproven many times. She also criticizes the medicalization of many social psychological problems among men and women both, where psychological issues that are clearly consequences of social ills or systematic mistreatment are perceived as 'diseases' from which only medication can be an escape. In particular it is often the case that what is considered a personal failing in women is considered a 'disease' beyond his control in men, whereas in reverse many natural and universal psychological phenomena, such as mood swings or periodic unhappiness, are considered symptoms of inherent weaknesses (PMS etc.) when they appear in women.

Equally however, Tavris makes sure to reject the mystifying nonsense about women as being superior to men, or having a "special bond with nature", and things of that sort. She concludes that what matters is not the use of a (usually male) standard and then measuring both sexes by them, but what is more important is making sure that an effective equality can exist between both sexes in the social and economic spheres, and to prefer social policy to psychiatry. This book is a valuable contribution to understanding the true nature of sexism today.

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Rckjones

When man is the measure of all things, how can woman measure up?

May 23, 2012

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

We read this book this month in my feminist book club, and was it a very good read. The premise of the book is that men are considered the default for human experience, while women are treated as an abnormal variation of the norm. The book was personally helpful to me because once Tavris pointed out this phenomenon, I started seeing it everywhere! It had never occurred to me just how much of stereotypical female behavior and expectations were based on male viewpoints and male templates. My favorite part of the book is the way Tavris vigorously dismantles study after study of the so-called differences between the sexes. Her intelligent and critical eye toward previous studies, and the assumptions and flaws buried in the hearts of them, was truly eye-opening. For example, Tavris points out that the idea that PMS causes not only physical changes but mood swings as well is unsubstantiated when men are included as a control group and comparison group. After all, if both genders go through the exact same mood swings and patterns of emotion, is there really anything going on except just being human?

Another thing I appreciated about the book is that Tavris attacks both assumptions and patterns that subjugate women, and ones that put women on a pedestal. I've found that one of the big objections that people have of feminists is the whole "femi-nazi" stereotype - that feminists are out to remake the world at the expense of men. You also get the hippy-granola nature-worshipping earth goddess variety of feminism, that argues that women have some mystical connection with the universe that men do not have. Tavris does a great job establishing why this approach to women's rights is not helpful to women or men, and how ultimately feminism is about treating women as people first instead of as women first. We are all human beings and basically want the same things at heart.

As other reviewers have mentioned, since the book was published in the 90's, parts are a bit dated. I wish Tavris would published an updated edition to include the most recent research and events in the world today. Still, I thought it was a great introduction into what feminism should and shouldn't be, and offered an interesting new way to look at the world of gender.

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