Accidental Feminists

by Jane Caro

How one generation became feminists—by accident.

Women over fifty-five are of the generation that changed everything. We didn't expect to. Or intend to. We weren't brought up much differently from the women who came before us, and we rarely identified as feminists, although almost all of us do now. Accidental Feminists is our story. It explores how the world we lived in-with the pill and a regular pay cheque-transformed us and how, almost in spite of ourselves, we revolutionised the world. It is a celebration of grit, adaptability, energy and persistence. It is also a plea for future generations to keep agitating for a better, fairer world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, History, Womens, Australia, Politics, Audiobook

277 pages, Paperback

First published February 5, 2019

About the author

Jane Caro wears many hats; including author, lecturer, mentor, social commentator, columnist, workshop facilitator, speaker, broadcaster and award-winning advertising writer. Jane runs her own communications consultancy and lectures in Advertising Creative at The School of Communication Arts at UWS. She has published three books: The Stupid Country: How Australia is dismantling public education co-authored with Chris Bonnor (2007), The F Word. How we learned to swear by feminism co-authored with Catherine Fox (2008), and Just a Girl (UQP, 2011). She has also appeared on Channel 7’s Sunrise, ABC’s Q&A and ABC’s The Gruen Transfer.

Reviews

[Eliatan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me so angry. Justifiably angry, because the half of humanity whose gender I share, and whom Jane writes about so eloquently, have for so long been put in our place not only by cultural norms but also by legal and social policies. Policies devised by people of another gender who raise themselves up by pulling us down. These policies continue to use and financially abuse the woman who love them until there is nothing left, and package it all under the lies of 'choice'. Case in point: lack of superannuation for older women who spent their lives caring for others, tied with a below the poverty line pensioner package. The men in my life would say it's the fault of society who at some point stopped valuing carers of the young and old, and that's got to be women's fault really for trying to grasp with both hands the opportunities afforded to men and wanting to be treated as equals. We are now equally free to be homeless and dependent in our retirement. I am not ok with this. I am furious. But this is where they got us good, I'm too damn exhausted being a full-time working, part-time masters studying mother of three to do much of anything about it.

Born in the '80s, I have unwittingly been the recipient of many of the changes women of Jane's generation and those before her worked so hard to achieve. And yet, you can't be what you can't see. Like Jane and her friends, some 30 odd years later as I was leaving school I could only imagine myself as a future wife and mother, with a career as a school teacher because that was the only 'real' career I saw available to the adult women I knew. First, we took care of our families. Then, we worked. The part I missed seeing as a girl was then we came home from work and we kept working after our families went to bed. I had internalised those 'lesser than' messages about my capability to choose a professional career in a way I had no idea was so detrimental until I actually grew up and had a family of my own. I don't pretend I can do it all, I'm the master of outsourcing. I am a vessel through which money flows to other women, paying lots of wonderful social benefiting taxes every time it changes hands....but I can not do what a man can: grasp and hold on to my money to create an empire for my heirs. Yet.

But this story is not about me, it's about my mother, my grandmother and all the other 'accidental feminists' who found themselves in a particular time and space where they had a voice and a choice, where their mothers and grandmothers had been silenced.

Learning to use your voice takes generational change. A master of her medium, Jane breaks it down, and tells the story of her generation trying to figure out how to do it all. Her daughters, and I, we were we watching our mothers and learning the whole time, and like Jane watching her own mother, learning plenty about what not to do. But like all women before us, I do know what power I accidentally internalised...how to work damn hard, how to dance backwards in high heels like Ginger and get so damn good at it I make it look effortless.

So to Jane, and my mother who is of a similar age, thank you for doing the best you could to try and shake off thousands of years of patriarchal domination in a single generation. You made the way easier for me, and in turn, I hope to be setting a fierce example for my daughters and their friends about what a woman and mother can do and be. I look forward to seeing what freedom my granddaughters take for granted and expect as their birthright.

When you're angry and frustrated at how far we still have to go, reading Accidental Feminists is a great opportunity to take a breath, stop and look back, and see how far we have truly come in such a short time. Oh, the places we will go!

[EmG ReadsDaily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating social commentary, loaded with thought-provoking facts and details.

[Emily (booksellersdiary) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Jane Caro. Her wit, intelligence and not so gentle mockery of trolls on Twitter keep me laughing most days.

But I didn’t love this book as much as I wanted to.

Like Clem Ford’s Boys Will Be Boys, this is Feminism 101 and I realise I am not the target market for this book. I am well versed in feminism, it’s history and the impact of legal changes on both mine and my mothers generation. I understand what the sweeping policy change of the Whitlam government did for Australian women.

Jane, I really wanted to love this. But while reading I wanted more information and suggestion solutions for the women this book was written for. The baby boomer women walking that fine line between relative comfort and abject poverty. I wanted more intersectionality. I wanted more about the impact of the current political environment on those same women, and I wanted you to make at least one mention of how much worse Aboriginal women have it compared to white women. You recognise your privilege, but you seem too removed from those of your generation who are struggling.

Solid 3 stars.

[Melbourne University Publishing]

‘Caro offers a generational bridge for readers who identify across all three waves of feminism: a way to understand what came before, to better see where to go from here.’—Melissa Cranenburgh, Books+Publishing Magazine

‘Caro helps us see the astonishing achievement of these revolutionaries dwelling amongst us and reveals why the world has never known anything like them.’—Ellen Fanning

‘A humane and important book about contemporary women’s lives, including the perilous economic predicament of many older women, written in a way that is warm, funny and accessible.’—Anne Manne

[Lauren Ricci · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a millennial Australian woman, I found this such an essential and empowering read, Caro looks at feminism, how far we have come, the issues that still oppress particularly older women today, whilst giving hope that equality for women can change and has changed in a short period of time.

[Tracey · Rating 5 out of 5]

In ‘The Accidental Feminist’ Jane Caro dissects how women currently in the 55-year plus range became both liberated and shackled through the contraceptive pill, the tampon and the pay check.
For those who are not aware Jane Caro is a social commentator, author, columnist and business woman who utilises a diverse range of media platforms to highlight a broad range of issues. I have always enjoyed watching Jane appear on shows like The Drum’ and enjoy her no nonsense, straight up, slap you in the face opinions. I was rather chuffed, to be offered the opportunity to read Jane’s latest book for an honest review.
Caro expertly peels back at how currently women in 55 plus bracket have been able to forge ahead. They are the first generation to receive a pay check, they are the first generation to access the pill, and they are the first generation to have access to the tampon. For those younger readers these may seem like simple achievements but I want you to imagine a world where you do not have the convenience of a tampon and continue to lead your current lifestyle.
The joys of earning your own wage have been tainted by the inability to plan for retirement. It is this group of women that Caro turns the torch onto. Having raised their children, worked hard, they find themselves in serious financial hardship with many facing homelessness. This is a growing problem and there is little focus by policy makers to address the issue. With housing prices high, rents high, it will take some clever thinking to find a solution. It these sections of the book that will make many women feel uncomfortable. That as a woman no matter what your age, the ongoing fragility of your financial predicament is going to remain a constant. That having a safe place to live, the ability to be independent could be taken away in a heartbeat through the loss of income, a relationship break up or ill health. It will have you really thinking about your financial future and looking for trustworthy advisor.
Caro explores other issues throughout the book as to how women have been categorised. From being hags, gold-diggers, slags, bossy bitch and dutiful housewives all these terms have been heaped onto women as they move through life. The power of the terminology, how it shapes, defines and continues to be place women into boxes. The continual battle women face that going out at night, having a couple of drinks and dressing in a seemingly provocative way is not an invitation for rape.
There is so much to unpack in this book. I found the chapter ‘Vessels of Repulsion’ extremely thought provoking as Caro explores the ownership of a woman’s body. From how women are told to dress and how to behave when expecting. It certainly highlights the conundrum women find themselves in.
Towards the last couple of chapters you wonder is there an upside as even Caro admits “If you are female, and try to get ahead there will be bigger, wider, deeper and deeper obstacles in your way.” Yet, things are changing; the extraordinarily brave women who have raised their voice through #metoo are having an impact. There is progress talk of quotas in politics, company boards are being discussed. I would say that even the ready acceptance of women’s sport on prime television has been important as has the success of the book Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls’ has provided access to role models for women. The last two chapters bring hope, rebellion and policy to the forefront.
Caro’s writing style is chatty and keeps you engaged. It is extremely well researched and not preachy. Caro lays out the facts, the issues in no nonsense way. Yes, there are parts of this book that are uncomfortable but you need that. There are women out there struggling who have become invisible and Caro rightly brings these issues into the spotlight.
The Accidental Feminist is a celebration of women how much they have achieved and a damning indictment on how much is still to be done.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

To afficionados of the ABC current affairs program The Drum, Jane Caro’s Accidental Feminists is exactly what you might expect of the author: forthright, amusing, full of pithy anecdotes to illustrate a point, and witheringly authentic.

What was revolutionary about our generation was that the generation born in the 1950s and 1960s is the first in history where most of the women worked for wages for most of their lives. And because money is power, this has changed everything.

While (of course) not everyone accessed higher education, Caro acknowledges that the Whitlam government’s abolition of university fees was pivotal:

If tertiary education was free, it was harder to rationalise preventing girls from accompanying their brothers, especially as so many of us had higher marks. More than that, however, our mothers also began to grasp the chance that was offered to them. It was female mature-age students who radically swelled the ranks at universities during that tiny window of opportunity…(p.71)

However…

[women] tend to be concentrated in lower-status industries and at the lower end of the pay scale. Even more depressing is the fact that previously high-status, well-paid occupations tend to fall in both status and pay when they become female dominated. General medical practice, marketing and human resources (the latter of which once meant a board position) spring to mind. (p.72)

Caro attributes this to ‘flexibility’ — because (again backed up by her statistics) most women still do the ‘second shift’ i.e. the housework, the cooking, the childcare. Again there are also structural reasons like expensive child-care and high effective marginal tax-rates when moving from three to four days a week to full-time work due to the loss of family and child benefits. (p.75)

The take-home message of Accidental Feminists is this: there is a cohort of older women in dire financial straits because of structural and social impediments to financial independence that have affected their entire lives.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/02/18/a...

[A.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am only a handful of years younger than the author so all her experiences are mine. Marry a spunk, eh?

My elder sister was offered a cadet journalism job with the Sydney Morning Herald and our father would not let her go do it as “Women weren’t journalists” which is odd, as you think the newspaper would know that.

Listening to this and remembering how many of the things she mentions that I saw for myself on Twitter, I suddenly realised just how much power Twitter gave to ordinary women everywhere in the world. At least until Elon Musk bought it and destroyed it in a handful of weeks. But that could not be what he wanted to do, could it?

“For those who still believe structural inequality is a figment of feminists’ imagination, let’s recap some of the ways the financial odds are stacked against women. The gender pay gap sits stubbornly at around 18 per cent in Australia. (It gets wider the higher up the ladder you go, by the way). Female-dominated occupations are less well paid than male-dominated ones. Six out of ten Australians work in an industry dominated by one gender. Australia has one of the highest rates of part-time work in the world: 25 per cent of us work part time. Women make up 71.6 per cent of all part-time workers and 54.7 per cent of all casual employees. Australian women are among the best educated in the world but have relatively low comparable workplace participation and achievement rates. And just to add insult to injury, products marketed to women are more expensive than those marketed to men!”

And in our fifties, we get hit with the double whammy of being expected to look after both our grandchildren and our aging parents.

4 stars

So far this year, my library saved me A$3,500.90

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was looking forward to reading this, but I have to admit I was quite disappointed. There was, as I anticipated, a great deal of truth, backed up by engaging anecdotes, a dry wit and lots of statistics. Caro spends a good deal of time on the frightening growth of older women living in poverty, a huge worry for those of us in the over 55 age group. This is an important discussion.
For all that, something was not right. For me, there were far too many sweeping generalisations, a feeling that Caro was trying to conflate all inequalities into a single discrimination called male oppression.
That male oppression exists I have no doubt, but Caro has failed to mention other inequalities. For example, I grew up in a situation where the biggest challenge for my parents was paying the rent and putting food on the table. I missed out on things, such as school excursions, not because of my gender, but because the family couldn’t afford it. My brothers missed out, too! And I’m sure there were – and are – many still in this situation.
Caro doesn’t mention the economic inequality that many of us fought, and are still fighting. There are other sorts of inequalities, too that she doesn’t mention. I got the feeling that she was trying to put all divides together (economic, religious, racial) and call it male oppression.
So, yes, it was an interesting read, but I felt there were too many generalisations and not enough in-depth analysis. Still, Accidental Feminists is a great book for book-club – our discussion was lively!

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. It gave me an insight into baby boomers and the way they where bought up. So many things I take for granted they didn’t have - like finishing Year 12 despite not being from a privileged family. Whilst I didn’t agree with everything - I don’t believe women on boards is a feminist priority - I was able to respect the arguments made.

I did find this book was from a very privileged perspective. Working class women have always had to work outside of the home, and the idea that boomers are the first women working for most of their lives is not entirely accurate. To be fair she did also discuss homelessness and Newstart as issues and the gender segregation of our workplaces. She also did her best to be intersectional and inclusive.

The only real criticism I have is that it became quite repetitive at points, and I noticed the same points being made and examples being used.

Overall this book was a good read. I genuinely admire and respect the author. I would definitely recommend it to other millennial feminists looking to greater understand our history and the perspective of another generation.

[Cass Moriarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know that any book by social commentator Jane Caro will be chock full of fascinating facts and statistics that she somehow manages to condense into a highly readable, engaging, poignant or frequently funny book. In her latest work Accidental Feminists (Melbourne University Publishing 2019), Caro focuses on the generation of women aged 55 years and over who unintentionally heralded the third wave of feminism (after the push for the vote – the first wave, and the second wave of progress during the 70’s), aided by technological advances and societal changes that revolutionised their personal lives and their expectations both of what they were expected to give as well as what they could hope to achieve. This group of women – building on the foundations already constructed by their women forebears – in some ways inhabit lives much richer than ever before in history, but paradoxically also simultaneously succumb to frightening social problems such as poverty and homelessness in ever greater numbers.
In chapters titled ‘Hags, Crones, Witches and Mothers-in-Law’, ‘Gold-diggers, Beggars and Thieves’, ‘Slags, Sluts, Gossips and Staceys’ and ‘Invalids, Liars, Hysterics and Madwomen’, Caro explores how women are viewed and treated by men, by society and by other women. She dismantles structures such as superannuation, child-care and tax policy to determine how and why they are so often going wrong for women, and she celebrates the determination and empowerment of women who are struggling to achieve equality (in work, in pay, in domestic duties, in child care, in sex and in perceptions).
Over 50 percent of us are women, and 100 percent of us are aging. But it is how we agitate for change, how we demand equality and what we seek as our fair share that will determine how future generations are treated and cared for. Those women aged 55 and over were raised to care for others, to stay at home and run the house, to mind the children and keep the home fires burning, with the hope – or really, the expectation – that in turn, they would be cared for as they aged. But their years of patchy employment records (interrupted by child-rearing, the necessity for part-time work, the lack of equal opportunities for promotion) have contributed to a rather dire predicament for many, who now find themselves struggling to make ends meet, homeless, invisible to society, unwanted by the workforce or unneeded by family.
Caro argues that it is innovations such as the contraceptive pill and the tampon that have impacted more on women of this age than even the labour-saving devices such as washing machines and dishwashers. She says that ‘many sectors of society have done their damnedest to hold back women every step of the way’ and through meticulous research, carefully documented case histories, and collected anecdotal evidence and stories, she interprets how and why this has happened, and what might be done to rectify the difficulties. ‘Women’, she says, ‘are not a job lot…[but]…what we share is the burden of assumptions that are made about what a woman should be like, what she should do, say, wear, think and express.’ In quoting social researcher Hugh Mackay, Caro repeats his finding that out of the top ten desires that need to be met to live a satisfying life, number one is ‘the desire to be taken seriously’. This was a light bulb moment for Caro, who ‘saw clearly that feminism is the struggle by half the human race to be taken seriously by the other half’.
Depicting women’s struggle to maintain a professional career and raise well-adjusted children – in addition to completing most of the unpaid work around the home – Caro states that while ‘intellectually, we knew we had a right to lives just as rich and varied as those of our brothers…emotionally, we still struggled against our own and others’ unconscious assumptions…guilt [and] disapproval’.
Amidst practical suggestions (make child care tax deductible! - legitimise it the same way we treat sick pay and superannuation; offer fathers monetary incentives to spend at least some time as the primary carer during their child’s infancy; recognise the billions of dollars saved by (mostly) women undertaking the care of the young, the disabled, the elderly and the vulnerable) and lots of personal anecdotes from her own life (she brilliantly describes the unpaid role of ‘producer’ that most women play in family life – managing the shopping and social engagements, the tradespeople and doctor visits – the ‘emotional labour’), Caro discusses the traditional, unpaid female roles that should be counted towards GDP despite not being a market commodity that can be bought and sold, such as volunteer work in a hospice, or the powerful example of breastfeeding (‘GDP unapologetically favours infant formula because it is a commercial product, so the more babies who are not breastfed (against all the recommendations by health experts) the better it is for GDP.’)
Caro also explores the generalised fear around women who are ‘out of control’, angry or that terrible but much used term ‘hysterical’, and examines the tendency to blame and shame women for acts perpetrated by men (which #MeToo is finally addressing), when all feminism really claims to do is to ‘give women the same rights as men to decide the shape of their own lives’. And she concludes by surmising that ‘… perhaps that was always patriarchy’s fatal flaw. No matter how much they held us back, no matter how many obstacles they put in our way, no matter how low our self-esteem or bitter our disappointments, they could not drain our brains out of our ears, or (totally) smash our spirit and our desire to participate in and contribute to the world. Many of us, throughout history, found a way.’

[Brona's Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 2019, Jane Caro has written a book about the women of her generation (the Baby Boomers) who didn't expect to change the world, but accidentally found that the world they had been brought up to live in, no longer existed. They were the first generation of women to have earned money working for most of their adult lives, and thanks to advances in medicine and technology, were able to take control of their own bodies, in a way that no previous generations could ever have imagined possible.
Full review here - http://bronasbooks.blogspot.com/2019/...

[Rachael McDiarmid · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars from me. I don’t normally read non fiction but by God this is a good read from Jane Caro. It’s our story. What women have gone through to get where we are now, what we are still going through, and where there are still gaps. She breaks down multiple subjects and puts them together rationally and intelligently. She debates her points well. It’s an excellent book and I think all women should read it to make sense of the world we live in.

[liz ⁀➷ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this on the train from Cornwall back to London. I loved her voice and wit, especially how she referred to men as blokes- just made it all that funky. Very insightful yet concise. A very intelligent and confidant woman with a lot of important opinions and life experience. A great read

[Roxana]

Me ha hecho apreciar a mis generaciones precedentes. Cuánto han conseguido las mujeres en general, y qué orgullo de las mujeres de mi familia.
Si lo encuentro en castellano se lo dejo a mi madre.
Solo me sobra la parte de economía australiana, no me enteré de gran cosa.

[Jennifer Rolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book I have read by this author but it will not be the last. She nailed it. Summed up my experience being a baby boomer feminist in far better language than I can manage to put together. Very articulate.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powerfully succinct and articulate, and a timely reminder of what we have achieved so far, and how much further we have to go.

[SS · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting facts about feminism in Australia (white women perspective from Jane Caro's experience and research). I found the initial analysis of feminism and the potential for change for our women elders very interesting. There was some monotonous components in the middle that saw me flagger. Nevertheless, I persisted and certainly have learnt some interesting anecdotal evidence on this topic.

[Nicola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elegantly but simply written, Accidental Feminists still pulls no punches and gives no ground. There are those who will say that some women are not prominently included in the book (Indigenous women and LGBTQI+) but Caro has done a generic generation of women full justice. I confess to spending multiple days cranky and wired, ready to snap the head off any passing man. I would love, however, to have had one chapter on WHY? Why do men support the patriarchy? What is the advantage to them, at least in modern days? Surely they're not still stuck in wanting to prove paternity? To be the boss at home? To be the boss everywhere? Surely they must recognise that dissing, oppressing and stifling over one half of their species cannot possibly be a good thing? Having read Caro's excellent descriptions of what the patriarchy does, I want to read soon the book that answers "why do men support the patriarchy?"

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, what a book. The best book I have ever read.
We owe everything to women before yes.

[Abigail · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

Well written with a wry sense of humor and research based conclusions. Worth the time to read it cover to cover, as I did in one sitting. Brava!!

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Caro writes with wit and insight. There’s much in here that enraged me - understandably, but there’s also a lot to make me feel hopeful and energised. It’s a shame that those who should read this, won’t. I loved the idea: even if women in the last 50 years don’t espouse feminism, they’ve benefited from it. We’ve come a long way but still so much is needed to change. Caro’s reasons to support quotas of women into parliament are on point. We already have quotas - look to the men already benefiting from quotas - the Nats in a LNP govt, the factions, the city-rural divide, smaller states.

[Noor · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love women!!!!!!!

[Louisa Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Accidental Feminists" is me! I truly wish I had been asked to write my story for this book (but I wasn't). Jane Caro is one year younger than me, and very similar to my history... well, the 'normal' side of it. I didn't go to private schools - I went to very good state schools (Hamilton, New Zealand: Melville Primary, Melville Intermediate and Melville High School). So did everyone in my family.

Chapter 3 wrote about "Dutiful daughters, wives, mothers and grandmothers", and I remember them all! Dad's mum was widowed and didn't remarry. Mum's mum had walked away from the domestic violence in her first marriage and remarried into a wonderful home. Mum married and started with a boy, who ended up very young (3 months old) in hospital where he stayed for a year - nearly dying more than once. Mum had worked before she got married, but didn't work in paid employment any more, yet she was on the disabled board for my brother. Dad was a carpenter, and with one disabled son and four normal girls he supported the whole family.

Caro wrote about attending church when she was very young (she sang 'All things bright and beautiful...' which I sang too). Caro left church and became atheist - so did I.

Caro went to university. So did I, but I didn't finish the degree because I didn't see the value of it way back then. I did a Post Grad Diploma at CQU six years ago, when I was 56. Perhaps that should count now, but I no longer use OHS because I can't. My story, not Caro's.

When I had my two children, the first one was pushed out under epidural. The second one was born in a different hospital - Taupo - which didn't have epidural, so I gave birth after so much pain and a lot of screaming. I'd felt pretty stupid then, but I've heard the same births so many times, usually on tv. Caro and I only had two children each. Very good on you Caro - we certainly didn't need any more than that... except I have read too many stories about HUGE families in churches. Why, for Pete's sake??

I am now 62 - 63 this year. I am an 'invalid', I am a 'madwoman', I have 'hysterics' and I'm still looked on as 'the weaker sex'. In fact, before I had my stroke 5 years ago I was fired from the company I'd worked for, for 7 years. A very different manager, he was. Not a 'good' manager, but he was male.

Caro wrote of women out-living men, especially these days. I don't think that's good for me because I live alone, now, and I couldn't live alone for another 30 years! Caro wrote about 'Invisibility v Independence'. She said that "[f]eminism may be an incomplete project, but it has never been as influential or as powerful as it is today." I truly wish that was right.

Well written, Jane Caro.

[Brit McCarthy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This copy was provided by the publishers in exchange for an honest review.

I had an expectation going into this book, and that is part of the reason that it just didn't work for me. I was expecting the inspirational stories of trailblazing women, who maybe didn't realise that what they were doing would change the course of the future for other women. I thought this book would make me feel empowered and inspired.

That's not what I got. I closed the book feeling confused and a tad worried and even dejected. I just couldn't relate, which was part of the problem. I mean, that's probably lucky - lucky circumstances, lucky time that I was born into, to a degree even a lucky life (just a degree, I definitely worked for and earned a good deal of what I have!). But I just felt like this book was shouting at me, at the world, which is fine until you scare off your audience. This book could have been a lot more effective if rather than just quoting her friends here and there, the author told their stories and did justice to them. It also could have been a lot more effective had she been able to offer some realistic suggestions for changes to policy that could be made for improvements for the lives of women and how we can change the things that she is shouting about. It's one thing to say "things have to change!" but if you're going to write a book about it, you have to put some thought into the how.

The other thing I found really frustrating is that the author writes as if the only good man is her husband. He is the pinnacle, the exception, and all the others are rubbish (to put it nicely). We all know that's not true, and I hope she does too, but it definitely didn't come across that way. Men and women have to work together for gender equality - that's the very essence of it, isn't it?

I liked the premise, however the execution didn't work for me. But times, they are a'changin'.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and thought it was very well written and edited well also. It was written in a style of a conversation over a glass of wine and there were some really telling points. For example, I was unaware of the situation that many women over the age of 55 are facing. The book caused you to think and reflect and that was its strength to me. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars was that in some parts, she tended to generalise and did not provide the evidence to support her claims in some parts, normally where she was generalising! Yet in other parts, her claims were very well researched and provided plenty of evidence. I think too, she was after a simple solution to fix all the world's problems and that was to end patriarchy. I fully agree that this is an issue but I'm not so sure fixing that will mean an end to all our problems. All up though, a very good book which I would encourage my daughters to read.

[Rikki Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't think this was a necessary read for me when it first came out and that striking cover and the title got my attention at the book shop. But after attending a conference at which Jane Caro spoke, and realising that the topics covered in here (like women over 50 are the highest growing group of people experiencing homelessness...) are not only relevant to a unit that I teach but also incredibly important in general, I decided I should give it a go. It was worth it. The only reason why I'm not raring it higher is because there was not a lot that was "new" for me. But the voice was engaging and many readers will most likely find the content eye-opening and all-too-relevant.
3.5 stars

[Freda Pierce · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book very disappointing. I expected more, yes some of it was interesting but I felt Jane had a good idea of an essay and then expanded it into a book. It was very repetitive. The same idea told many slightly differently. And this book is about my generation and it was very much a generalisation and not everyone's experience. It was those generalisations that made me annoyed, as if the achievements of previous generations strong women were not important. I don't think this was her intent but that is how it came across.

[Bianca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Women over fifty-five are the fastest-growing group to experience homelessness in Australia. The number one reason for homelessness is escaping domestic violence, unexpected, major life circumstances and lack of affordable and social housing.

This book was published in 2019, and since then, the issues have grown exponentially, the increased cost of living affecting an increasing number of people.

Jane Caro looks back at her time growing up, and at the achievements of feminism, including the #meetoo movement. She's concerned about the plight of women of a certain age, who after years of caring for their families and putting everyone's needs ahead of theirs, find themselves in their fifties and sixties with no superannuation or very little, single, no housing and no possibility to get decent employment due to lack of skills and/or ageism and sexism.
Society, patriarchal beliefs, the tax system, the lack of adequate and affordable childcare, and especially the fact that women do the majority of caring are some of the many barriers that see women 's financial disadvantage compounding.

Of course, there had never been more women with power and financial affluence, which allows women over a certain age to finally have the time to do volunteer work and enjoy hobbies and take up new interests that they could never find the time to do while caring for kids and/or working.
We need more women in power, in all fields. The saying/stats show that if you lift a woman out of poverty, she'll bring up four other people with her.

We need more women to be in power, not only because women represent over 50% of the population. And most importantly, we should demand and expect that women's contributions as carers are recognised in a tangible way, and by tangible I don't mean the crappy Mother's Day gifts - as in financial recompense so that their later years are comfortable. Like it or not, if women stopped providing care services, nobody would achieve anything. Just think about it, everything women do is devalued. Women do most of the cooking, who are the most celebrated chefs - men! Women did most of the sewing and mending, yet men are the "great designers" - yes, I'm rolling my eyes big time and may have said very "unlady" like words (speaking of which, using lady to describe certain attributes is another way of keeping women in their place - be pretty, demure and most importantly, quiet, but I digress).

I could write an essay on the book and its topics, but I've got to go cook dinner...

[Caren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly engaging, Caro's baby boomer perspective of the history of the "liberation" of women draws a variety of responses from the reader: PRIDE in the achievements of women over the generations, many of them invisible and unknown; ANGER at the generations of powerful patriarchal societies that continue, albeit to a lesser extent, to thwart the creation of a truly egalitarian society; and COMMITMENT to improving the status of older women, lied to and taken advantage of. "We told them to stay home and look after their kids, then we told them they were too old and unskilled to be worth employing. Finally we...told them it [their impoverishment]was all their own fault."

Whereas her research and commentary are presented with clarity, relevant personal anecdotes, and often sarcasm and humour, when Caro discusses the plight of older women in today's society, her anger at the injustice of their plight is palpable. Thus, her message is clear: the work of past generations to improve the lives of women is incomplete.

Carol's portrayal of the changing lives of women of her generation calls for further efforts to bring women into positions of leadership (through quotas) in business, politics, and in the work areas that are traditionally thought of as more "masculine" roles. She invites men to take a more caring role in their families, to share the "labour" and, by doing so, to free women up to take a more active and continuous part in the work force outside of home.

As an older baby boomer, and having grown up in America, I came to see that Caro's Australian experience lagged behind that of my own generation of women: my mother went to work in the early 1960s; in my social group, all of us girls were encouraged to attend university and left with degrees that enabled us to work professionally; and the articulate voices of feminists were already on our university campuses. Nonetheless, we have all come to the same conclusion: we must work harder to provide equity to older women who were not able to reap the benefits some of us were able to enjoy.