Half a century after the publication of The Feminine Mystique, have women really exchanged purity and maternity to become desiring machines inspired only by variations of sex, shopping and masochism - all coloured a brilliant neuro-pink? In this volume, fifty women young and old - writers, politicians, actors, scientists, mothers - reflect on the shades that inspired them and what being woman means to them today. Contributors include: Margaret Atwood, Joan Bakewell, Bidisha, Lydia Cacho, Shami Chakrabarti, Lennie Goodings, Linda Grant, Natalie Haynes, Siri Hustvedt, Kathy Lette, Kate Mosse, Pussy Riot, Bee Rowlatt, Elif Shafak, Ahdaf Soueif, Sandi Toksvig, Natasha Walter, Timberlake Wertenbaker Jeanette Winterson - alongside the three editors.

The feminist thinkers in this collection are the designated "fifty-one key feminist thinkers," historical and contemporary, and also the authors of the entries. Collected here are fifty-one key thinkers and fifty-one authors, recognizing that women are fifty-one percent of the population. There are actually one hundred and two thinkers collected in these pages, as each author is a feminist thinker, too: scholars, writers, poets, and activists, well-established and emerging, old and young and in-between. These feminists speak the languages of art, politics, literature, education, classics, gender studies, film, queer theory, global affairs, political theory, science fiction, African American studies, sociology, American studies, geography, history, philosophy, poetry, and psychoanalysis. Speaking in all these diverse tongues, conversations made possible by feminist thinking are introduced and engaged. Key figures include: Simone de Beauvoir Doris Lessing Toni Morrison Cindy Sherman Octavia Butler Marina Warner Elizabeth Cady Stanton Chantal Akerman Betty Friedan Audre Lorde Margaret Fuller Sappho Adrienne Rich Each entry is supported by a list of the thinker’s major works, along with further reading suggestions. An ideal resource for students and academics alike, this text will appeal to all those interested in the fields of gender studies, women’s studies and women’s history and politics.

Since second-wave feminism of the 1970s, women's rights and opportunities in education and employment have increased across the globe, but has equality, whether social, political or legal, really been achieved? In this fascinating book, Miriam E. David, a well-known and influential feminist in higher education, celebrates the achievements of international feminists as activists and scholars. She provides a critique of the expansion of global higher education masking their pioneering zeal and zest for knowledge. Looking at the changing zeitgeist, David contends that feminism has yet to have an enduring influence, despite how generations of women have felt empowered. She illustrates the power of patriarchal social relations and how everyday sexism or misogyny is keenly felt. This impassioned book asks whether a feminist-friendly future is possible, or indeed, desirable.

The Routledge Companion to Media and Gender offers a comprehensive examination of media and gender studies, charting its histories, investigating ongoing controversies, and assessing future trends. The 59 chapters in this volume, written by leading researchers from around the world, provide scholars and students with an engaging and authoritative survey of current thinking in media and gender research. The Companion includes the following features: With each chapter addressing a distinct, concrete set of issues, the volume includes research from around the world to engage readers in a broad array of global and transnational issues and intersectional perspectives. Authors address a series of important questions that have consequences for current and future thinking in the field, including postfeminism, sexual violence, masculinity, media industries, queer identities, video games, digital policy, media activism, sexualization, docusoaps, teen drama, cosmetic surgery, media Islamophobia, sport, telenovelas, news audiences, pornography, and social and mobile media. A range of academic disciplines inform exploration of key issues around production and policymaking, representation, audience engagement, and the place of gender in media studies. The Routledge Companion to Media and Gender is an essential guide to the central ideas, concepts and debates currently shaping media and gender research.

Feminism, Gender and Universities demonstrates the positive and robust impacts that feminism has had on higher education, through the eyes and in the words of the participants in changing political and social processes. Drawing on the ’collective biography’ of leading feminist scholars from around the world and current evidence relating to gender equality in education, this book employs methods including biographies, life histories, and narratives to show how the feminist project to transform women’s lives in the direction of gender and social equality became an educational and pedagogical one. Through careful attention to the ways in which feminism has transformed feminist academic women’s lives, the author explores the importance of education in changing socio-political contexts, raising questions about further changes that are necessary. Delving into the deeper and more ’hidden’ echelons of education, the book examines the contested nature of current managerial or business approaches to university and education, revealing these to be incompatible with feminist thought. A plea for more careful attention to education and the ways in which the processes of knowledge-making influence (and are influenced by) gender and sexual relations, Feminism, Gender and Universities will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in gender, pedagogy and modern academic life.

"If you’ve never read it, read it now." —Arianna Huffington, O, The Oprah Magazine Landmark, groundbreaking, classic—these adjectives barely do justice to the pioneering vision and lasting impact of The Feminine Mystique. Published in 1963, it gave a pitch-perfect description of “the problem that has no name”: the insidious beliefs and institutions that undermined women’s confidence in their intellectual capabilities and kept them in the home. Writing in a time when the average woman first married in her teens and 60 percent of women students dropped out of college to marry, Betty Friedan captured the frustrations and thwarted ambitions of a generation and showed women how they could reclaim their lives. Part social chronicle, part manifesto, The Feminine Mystique is filled with fascinating anecdotes and interviews as well as insights that continue to inspire. This 50th–anniversary edition features an afterword by best-selling author Anna Quindlen as well as a new introduction by Gail Collins.

Ian McEwan once said, 'When women stop reading, the novel will be dead.' This book explains how precious fiction is to contemporary women readers, and how they draw on it to tell the stories of their lives. Female readers are key to the future of fiction and—as parents, teachers, and librarians—the glue for a literate society. Women treasure the chance to read alone, but have also gregariously shared reading experiences and memories with mothers, daughters, grandchildren, and female friends. For so many, reading novels and short stories enables them to escape and to spread their wings intellectually and emotionally. This book, written by an experienced teacher, scholar of women's writing, and literature festival director, draws on over 500 interviews with and questionnaires from women readers and writers. It describes how, where, and when British women read fiction, and examines why stories and writers influence the way female readers understand and shape their own life stories. Taylor explores why women are the main buyers and readers of fiction, members of book clubs, attendees at literary festivals, and organisers of days out to fictional sites and writers' homes. The book analyses the special appeal and changing readership of the genres of romance, erotica, and crime. It also illuminates the reasons for British women's abiding love of two favourite novels, Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre. Taylor offers a cornucopia of witty and wise women's voices, of both readers themselves and also writers such as Hilary Mantel, Helen Dunmore, Katie Fforde, and Sarah Dunant. The book helps us understand why—in Jackie Kay's words—'our lives are mapped by books.'