Backlash

September 30, 1991
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.

November 1, 2006
Faludi's 1991 best seller got down and dirty with all the antifeminism backlash that she asserted was still keeping women second-class citizens in the work force and in greater society in general. The younger generation perhaps isn't as interested in feminism as their mothers, and Faludi's new introduction points out that while women have been able to "achieve economic goals, we have yet to find a way to turn those gains toward the larger and more meaningful goals of social change, responsible citizenship, the advancement of human creativity, and the building of a mature and vital public world."

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