Backlash

Amazon.com A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal， Faludi lays out a two-fold thesis in this aggressive work: First， despite the opinions of pop-psychologists and the mainstream media， career-minded women are generally not husband-starved loners on the verge of nervous breakdowns. Secondly， such beliefs are nothing more than anti-feminist propaganda pumped out by conservative research organizations with clear-cut ulterior motives. This backlash against the women's movement， she writes， "stands the truth boldly on its head and proclaims that the very steps that have elevated women's positions have actually led to their downfall." Meticulously researched， Faludi's contribution to this tumultuous debate is monumental and it earned the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction. From Publishers Weekly Far from being "liberated，" American women in the 1980s were victims of a powerful backlash against the handful of small， hard-won victories the feminist movement had achieved， says Wall Street Journal reporter Faludi， who won a Pulitzer this year. Buttressing her argument with facts and statistics， she states that the alleged "man shortage" endangering women's chances of marrying (posited by a Harvard-Yale study) and the "infertility epidemic" said to strike professional women who postpone childbearing are largely media inventions. She finds evidence of antifeminist backlash in Hollywood movies， in TV's thirtysomething ， in 1980s fashion ads featuring battered models and in the New Right's attack on women's rights. She directs withering commentary at Robert Bly's all-male workshops， Allan Bloom's "prolonged rant" against women and Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer's revisionism. This eloquent， brilliantly argued book should be read by everyone concerned about gender equality. First serial to Glamour and Mother Jones. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information， Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. See all Editorial Reviews