‘Difficult Women: A History of Feminism’ by Helen Lewis

Drawing on archival research and interviews, 'Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights' is a funny, fearless narrative history, which shows why the feminist movement has succeeded.

Synopsis

Well-behaved women don’t make history: difficult women do.

Feminism’s 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. It’s time to reclaim the history of feminism as a history of difficult women.

Among those profiled in 'Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights' are:

• Marie Stopes (1880-1958)
  Scientist, author of the sex manual Married Love, founder of influential birth control clinics and a eugenicist.
• Jayaben Desai (1933 - 2010)
  Leader of the ‘strikers in saris’ whose campaign terrified Thatcher – and provoked an anti-union backlash.
• Annie and Jessie Kenney (1879-1953) (1887-1985)
  The working class 'mill girls' who plotted violence for the Suffragettes.
• Caroline Norton (1808-77)
  Accused of adultery with the prime minister, she fought to change the law to see her children again.

In this book, you’ll meet the working-class suffragettes who advocated bombings and arson; the princess who discovered why so many women were having bad sex; the ‘striker in a sari’ who terrified Margaret Thatcher; 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 women’s rights.

Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights
by Helen Lewis
Published in Hardcover (27 February 2020)
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Language: English, 368 pages
ASIN: B07WVXHFM9 (Kindle)
ISBN-10: 1787331288 (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1787331296 (Paperback)
Guide Price: £9.99 - Kindle | £13.59 - Hardcover | £10.81 - Paperback
Click to buy Kindle Edition | Hardcover | Paperback

About the author

Helen Lewis (Author, Reader) Helen Lewis is a staff writer at the Atlantic, and a former deputy editor of the New Statesman. She has written for the Guardian, Sunday Times, New York Times and Vogue. She is a regular host of BBC Radio 4’s Week in Westminster, a regular panellist on the News Quiz and Saturday Review, and a paper reviewer on The Andrew Marr Show. She was the 2018/19 Women in the Humanities Honorary Writing Fellow at Oxford University.