Books like Whole Woman by Germaine Greer

A classic of feminism, *Backlash* exposes the backlash against women's rights.

Living her own flamboyant fusion of feminism and sexual freedom with tumultuous results, Germaine Greer put theory into practice. When she contrasted this version of feminism with conventional mores in The Female Eunuch, highlighting the extent to which women were the constructs and handmaidens of men, the shock of recognition it produced was profound. The women of an entire generation were compelled to reconsider their lives, their partners, their families, their work, their whole way of being. Later characterizations of Greer as a "bad" feminist or an "anti-feminist" miss the point. Germaine Greer: Untamed Shrew portrays an exceptionally talented, spirited, gutsy woman at odds with the family and era into which she was born, who went on to have a major - if ambiguous - impact for the good of women in her time. In later works (Daddy, We Hardly Knew You; Sex and Destiny; Slip-shod Sibyls; The Obstacle Race), Greer has continually challenged feminist and sexual orthodoxies, confounding the women's movement and generating headlines over three decades in the process.

The Fifties: A Women's Oral History presents first‑hand accounts of American women's lives during the 1950s, exploring the era’s gender expectations, social pressures, and the early sparks of feminist thought.

Examines the intertwined histories of birth control, feminism, and socialist movements, highlighting the evolving legal status and social conditions of women in Great Britain and the Soviet Union during the early twentieth century.

In this singularly authoritative, intelligent and audacious study, Germaine Greer challenges all of our accepted notions about the physical and emotional effects of menopause and aging - and thereby lays the foundation for a drastic reassessment by women of the ways in which they contemplate and experience the stages of their lives that society has conditioned them to fear and, ultimately, to regret. Quoting extensively from medical, historical, anthropological, literary and other cultural sources, Greer examines the diverse ideas and theories about menopause and aging during the last two hundred years, revealing how they have and have not evolved, concluding that "the sum of our ignorance still far outweighs our knowledge," and that the sum of a woman's self-knowledge is potentially more enlightening than anything she can learn from "objective" observers of her condition. Greer exhorts women to take responsibility for their own health and to question the accepted "truths" and those who determine them. To that end, she makes a detailed study of the various current treatments for menopause - particularly of estrogen replacement therapy, puncturing the overblown promises made on its behalf by the medical profession and drug manufacturers - and explores myriad less well publicized, traditional and alternative non-medical treatments. She delves into the full range of emotional and physical changes in the menopausal woman and proposes a new "art" of aging based on each woman's acceptance of her own experience and her transformed needs and desires. The deeply impassioned ideas Germaine Greer puts forth sound a rallying cry against the cultural and sexual stereotypes that have long hampered the lives of menopausal and aging women. With a profound fierceness of purpose, she encourages women to embrace the freedoms inherent in the change and to forge the serenity and power that can be its most permanent consequences. Powerful and provocative, The Change demands alienation and reaction. It is a landmark book.

"From the earliest years of the Soviet regime, deliberate transformation of the role of women in economic, political, and family life aimed at incorporating female mobilization into a larger strategy of national development. Addressing a neglected problem in the literature on modernization, the author brings an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of the motivations, mechanisms, and consequences of the official Soviet commitment to female liberation, and its implications for the role of women in Soviet society today. She argues that Soviet policy was shaped less by the individualistic and libertarian concerns of nineteenth-century feminism or Marxism than by a strategy of modernization in which the transformation of women's roles was perceived by the Soviet leadership as the means of tapping a major economic and political resource. Bringing together the available data, the author analyzes the scope and limits of sexual equality in the Soviet system, and at the same time places the Soviet pattern in a broader historical and comparative perspective."--Jacket.

A collection of essays examining feminist history, female friendships, and gender roles in nineteenth‑century America, with discussions of Davy Crockett, the feminine cycle, hysteria, abortion, and androgyny.