THE COMING MATRIARCHY: How Women Will Gain the Balance of Power

by Elizabeth with Laura Ashcraft Nickles ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 17, 1981

There's no doubt that women have been advancing in white-collar jobs (including management), and may some day achieve equality, but matriarchy? C'mon now. So much of this repeats what we already know: inflationary spirals have propelled wives and mothers back into the workplace--where many like it just fine--and self-esteem is at an all-time peak. More women are now earning more than $20,000 a year (which, we're told, automatically makes them ""Pacesetters""). Such women are becoming more aggressive, ambitious, and independent, even to the extent of shedding husbands who are simply too--yawn--stifling. But after the-story-so-far, we get fantasyland: institutions aren't changing fast enough to meet women's needs (day-care is less available than in 1945), so women will simply ""restructure"" the entire socioeconomic system. And ultimately women's innate superiority will surface in a leadership style known as ""beta,"" or humanitarian and long-range, as opposed to men's ""alpha,"" or rational and short-sighted. This is the kind of book that assumes that ""validation"" can only occur outside the home, that homemakers are exclusively martyrs whose only perspective is the needs of others (despite occasional disclaimers to the contrary). It's smug, thinly developed, and altogether an astonishingly poor advertisement for the very real abilities of women.

Pub Date: Aug. 17, 1981

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Playboy--dist. by Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1981

Categories: NONFICTION