Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

by Susan Faludi

A new edition of the feminist classic, with an all-new introduction exploring the role of backlash in the 2016 election and laying out a path forward for 2020 and beyond

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award • “Enraging, enlightening, and invigorating, Backlash is, most of all, true.”—Newsday

First published in 1991, Backlash made headlines and became a bestselling classic for its thoroughgoing debunking of a decadelong antifeminist backlash against women’s advances. A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, Susan Faludi brilliantly deconstructed the reigning myths about the “costs” of women’s independence—from the supposed “man shortage” to the “infertility epidemic” to “career burnout” to “toxic day care”—and traced their circulation from Reagan-era politics through the echo chambers of mass media, advertising, and popular culture. 
 
As Faludi writes in a new preface for this edition, much has changed in the intervening years: The Internet has given voice to a new generation of feminists. Corporations list “gender equality” among their core values. In 2019, a record number of women entered Congress. Yet the glass ceiling is still unshattered, women are still punished for wanting to succeed, and reproductive rights are hanging by a thread. This startling and essential book helps explain why women’s freedoms are still so demonized and threatened—and urges us to choose a different future.

• ISBN10: 0307345424
• ISBN13: 9780307345424
• Publish Date: 15 August 2006 (first published 30 March 1992)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Crown
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 608
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780307345424

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

You look at this book, my edition was published in 1992 and you kinda ask what relevance there is to this book, I mean it's over 20 years old, yeah, and we've learned nothing. We're revisiting the same old tired shite again and again, being told that feminism is over, that people are tired of hearing about it that we have equality, why are we still fighting?

Because 20 years later we still:

Have inequity in wages
Have poor representation in TV and film and if we speak out less than men in debates we're perceived as trying to dominate the conversation.
Have people try to tell us that domestic chores are innate, that we should prefer them to working out of the home
Have people say that pink is the colour we should choose
Even though, and this kinda shocked me, research in the 1970s (by John T Molloy, see pages 209-211) show that women get more respect and time in a business environment. That "dressing to succeed in business and dressing to be sexually attractive are almost mutually exclusive" and that maybe this needs updating but maybe also more choice in women's business clothing might be a good thing, that maybe dressing in the same suit for a year (with different shirts/blouses) might be accepted? That it shouldn't be a choice between 3" and 4" heels for court shoes and that "women in comfortable shoes" wouldn't be a veiled insult?
Have women giggle about how they're not good at maths because they're women.
Have girls out perform boys in STEM subjects in school but be actively discouraged from a career in these disciplines
Have a majority of doctors female but still imagery for young girls is that they're nurses, and rejection of male nursing.
The over-sexualisation of Halloween costumes for both adults and young girls (hey if you want to wear it, fine, can I have a choice too?)
Radio stations announcing that they are cutting down on female voices because people don't like them, not that they schedule them against popular choices.

This book looks at some of the backlashes and shines a torch on them and asks why we put up with it.

So tell me, why do we?