By the time she was 40, the study concluded, she had only a 1.3 percent chance. They culminated in a Newsweek claim that a woman over 40 had a better chance of being shot by a terrorist than finding a husband. A very curious analogy indeed. Just as Anita Hill's accusations of sexual harassment provoked spontaneous outrage, this book will have a spine-stiffening effect on any woman who thinks she is paranoid. Yes, says Ms. Faludi, they are after you.
Success is really failure, and women's liberation is enslavement.
The author, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal, lays out the historical and cultural setting for the revisionist messages of the 1980's. She skewers the data, the data collectors and the data purveyors. Similarly, the epidemic of sexual abuse in day care also took place in the news media. In real life, and in reliable studies, the abuse crisis was, if anywhere, at home. Ms. Faludi also takes apart the rash of 1980's stories about the miserable lives of successful women.