I highly recommend ” Backlash- The undeclared war against American women”
Faludi is at her best in this brilliantly written, very witty, intelectually stimulating and funny book.
A couple of excerpts:
Women are unhappy precisely because they are free. Women are enslaved by their own liberation. They have grabbed at the gold ring of independence, only to miss the one ring that really matters. They have gained control of their fertility, only to destroy it. They have pursued their own professional dreams—and lost out on the greatest female adventure. The women’s movement, as we are told time and again, has proved women’s own worst enemy.
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If American women are so equal, why do they represent two-thirds of all poor adults? Why are nearly 75 percent of full-time working women making less than $20,000 a year, nearly double the male rate? Why are they still far more likely than men to live in poor housing and receive no health insurance, and twice as likely to draw no pension? Why does the average working woman’s salary still lag as far behind the average man’s as it did twenty years ago? Why does the average female college graduate today earn less than a man with no more than a high school diploma just as she did in the ‘50s)—and why does the average female high school graduate today earn less than a male high school dropout? Why do American women, in fact, face one of the worstgender-based pay gap in the developed world?
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