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Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

A new edition of the feminist classic, with an all-new introduction exploring the role of backlash in the 2016 election and laying out a path forward for 2020 and beyond

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award • “Enraging, enlightening, and invigorating,  Backlash  is, most of all, true.”— Newsday

First published in 1991,  Backlash  made headlines and became a bestselling classic for its thoroughgoing debunking of a decadelong antifeminist backlash against women’s advances. A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, Susan Faludi brilliantly deconstructed the reigning myths about the “costs” of women’s independence—from the supposed “man shortage” to the “infertility epidemic” to “career burnout” to “toxic day care”—and traced their circulation from Reagan-era politics through the echo chambers of mass media, advertising, and popular culture. 
 
As Faludi writes in a new preface for this edition, much has changed in the intervening The Internet has given voice to a new generation of feminists. Corporations list “gender equality” among their core values. In 2019, a record number of women entered Congress. Yet the glass ceiling is still unshattered, women are still punished for wanting to succeed, and reproductive rights are hanging by a thread. This startling and essential book helps explain why women’s freedoms are still so demonized and threatened—and urges us to choose a different future.

608 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1991

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About the author

Susan Faludi

23 books404 followers
Susan C. Faludi (born April 18, 1959) is an American humanist, journalist and author. She won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism in 1991, for a report on the leveraged buyout of Safeway Stores, Inc., a report that the Pulitzer Prize committee commended for depicting the "human costs of high finance".

Faludi was born to a Jewish family in Queens, New York in 1959 and grew up in Yorktown Heights, New York. Her mother was a homemaker and journalist and is a long-time New York University student. Her father is a photographer who had emigrated from Hungary, a survivor of the Holocaust. Susan graduated from Harvard University in 1981, where she wrote for The Harvard Crimson, and became a journalist, writing for The New York Times, Miami Herald, Atlanta Journal Constitution, San Jose Mercury News, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. Throughout the eighties she wrote several articles on feminism and the apparent resistance to the movement. Seeing a pattern emerge, Faludi wrote Backlash, which was released in late 1991. In 2008-2009, Faludi was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She lives with fellow author Russ Rymer. Since January 2013, Faludi has been a contributing editor at The Baffler magazine in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

(from Wikipedia)

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Profile Image for Juliana Santos.
36 reviews1 follower
August 9, 2017
Um livro necessário a todas as mulheres que queiram entender onde se encontra o movimento feminista hoje. Nossa geração é a geração do pós Backlash, e muitas das discussões que são mantidas até hoje tem sua base na política da Nova direita que teve força nos EUA durante o governo Reagan. Faludi deixa claro (no epíligo) que não há forma de enfrentamento individual contra o machismo, o que se é necessário é o movimento coletivo em prol dos direitos das mulheres.
O livro em si é uma análise profunda da mudança de pensamento e retrocesso que se deu durante o governo Reagan, mostra como os departamentos do governo federal americano ligados a pesquisas sobre mulheres e suas condições e agências reguladoras que obrigavam empresas a contratar mulheres perderam financiamento. O livro também mostra como o backlash se deu no cinema e por fim, e talvez mais importante, como o backlash envadiu os corpos femininos tentando restringir o direito ( garantido pelo caso Roe v Wade) ao aborto.

Um livro essencial.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review