There's never been a better time to be a woman. Girls do better at school than boys and are more likely to go to university. As a result, women are taking more of the top jobs and the gender pay gap has all but disappeared. But rather than revelling in this success, today's feminists tell us that little has changed and women are still victims of patriarchy, living in a world of sexual harassment, rape culture and online abuse. Young women today have freedom and opportunities their grandmothers could barely have imagined, thanks to those feminists who fought for women's rights. Yet rather than encouraging women to seize the new possibilities open to them, contemporary feminism tells them they are still oppressed.
Women Versus Feminism: Why We All Need Liberating from the Gender Wars questions the new feminism that has become so fashionable today, unpicking the statistics from the horror stories to explore the reality of women's lives. It examines the role feminism played in bringing about liberation and the influence it still has, but argues that today's feminism is merely obsessed with trivial issues, such as skinny models, badly phrased jokes and misplaced compliments. Today's feminists tell women they are victims of men's bad behaviour in the street, at home and in the office. But pitching men and women against each other in a never ending gender war benefits no-one. And when women come to see themselves as victims they abandon the ability to be powerful and strong.
Feminism does women no favours and it's time we were all liberated from the gender wars.
