num_pages: 368
description: Well-behaved women dont make history: difficult women do. Feminisms success is down to complicated contradictory imperfect women who fought each other as well as fighting for equal rights. Helen Lewis argues that too many of these pioneers have been whitewashed or forgotten in our modern search for feel-good inspirational heroines. Its time to reclaim the history of feminism as a history of difficult women.In this book youll meet the working-class suffragettes who advocated bombings and arson; the princess who discovered why so many women were having bad sex; the pioneer of the refuge movement who became a mens rights activist; the striker in a sari who terrified Margaret Thatcher; the wronged Victorian wife who definitely wasnt sleeping with the prime minister; and the lesbian politician who outraged the country. Taking the story up to the present with the twenty-first-century campaign for abortion services Helen Lewis reveals the unvarnished  and unfinished  history of womens rights.Drawing on archival research and interviews Difficult Women is a funny fearless and sometimes shocking narrative history which shows why the feminist movement has succeeded  and what it should do next. The battle is difficult and we must be difficult too.
language: English
title: Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights
publisher: Vintage Digital