McCorduck and Ramsey inform, amuse, and at times disturb with these scenarios of women's possible future condition. Worried that feminist views of the future have been too ``upbeat'' or parochial, the authors map out four scenarios for women's lives across the globe over the next 20 years, ranging from virtual slavery to liberation, and from stagnation to separatism. (McCorduck and Ramsey are members of Global Business Network, a California-based organization that uses scenario planning to help identify strategies for the future). Their first scenario is a Handmaid's Talelike world in which women's sexuality is strictly controlled and exploited, their attire is restrictive, and business is ``a man's world.'' In contrast, Scenario 2 involves gender equality, the rise of goddess worship, the demasculinization of science, and the ascendancy of women in business and government. Hallmarks of the third scenario are token gains for women but overall lack of improvement. The last possibility involves women building alternative institutions, such as schools and clinics. The authors admit that the real future will probably not look like any of these, but they argue that scenarios are ``a way to plan positive change.'' And in many respects the book is helpful- -particularly in highlighting trends, including aging populations across the globe and conflicts between individual rights and group power. However, there are problems, such as the disorienting use of projections based on actual statistics in conjunction with ``testimonials'' from fictional women. Whatever the scenario, the author's biases repeatedly creep in, so that information technology is celebrated, and women (unlike men) are viewed as essentially cooperative, environmentalist, and nonlinear in their thinking. Finally, their 20-year time span seems rather short for the radical changes they describe. Nonetheless, the book reminds us of the many factors to consider when assessing gender relations, and it highlights how precious the gains of late 20th century feminism really are when taken in a global and historical context.
Pub Date: June 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-201-48978-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
An intriguing examination of the complexity of female power in a variety of relationships.
A collection of personal journal entries from the feminist writer that explores power dynamics and “a subject [she] kept coming back to: women strong in public, weak in private.”
Cultural critic and essayist Roiphe (Cultural Reporting and Criticism/New York Univ.; The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End, 2016, etc.), perhaps best known for the views she expressed on victimization in The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism (1994), is used to being at the center of controversy. In her latest work, the author uses her personal journals to examine the contradictions that often exist between the public and private lives of women, including her own. At first, the fragmented notebook entries seem overly scattered, but they soon evolve into a cohesive analysis of the complex power dynamics facing women on a daily basis. As Roiphe shares details from her own life, she weaves in quotes from the writings of other seemingly powerful female writers who had similar experiences, including Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, and Hillary Clinton. In one entry, Roiphe theorizes that her early published writings were an attempt to “control and tame the narrative,” further explaining that she has “so long and so passionately resisted the victim role” because she does not view herself as “purely a victim” and not “purely powerless.” However, she adds, that does not mean she “was not facing a man who was twisting or distorting his power; it does not mean that the wrongness, the overwhelmed feeling was not there.” Throughout the book, the author probes the question of why women so often subjugate their power in their private lives, but she never quite finds a satisfying answer. The final entry, however, answers the question of why she chose to share these personal journal entries with the public: “To be so exposed feels dangerous, but having done it, I also feel free.”
An intriguing examination of the complexity of female power in a variety of relationships.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2801-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
No one’s mind will be changed by Karl’s book, but it’s a valuable report from the scene of an ongoing train wreck.
The chief White House and Washington correspondent for ABC provides a ringside seat to a disaster-ridden Oval Office.
It is Karl to whom we owe the current popularity of a learned Latin term. Questioning chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, he followed up a perhaps inadvertently honest response on the matter of Ukrainian intervention in the electoral campaign by saying, “What you just described is a quid pro quo.” Mulvaney’s reply: “Get over it.” Karl, who has been covering Trump for decades and knows which buttons to push and which to avoid, is not inclined to get over it: He rightly points out that a reporter today “faces a president who seems to have no appreciation or understanding of the First Amendment and the role of a free press in American democracy.” Yet even against a bellicose, untruthful leader, he adds, the press “is not the opposition party.” The author, who keeps his eye on the subject and not in the mirror, writes of Trump’s ability to stage situations, as when he once called Trump out, at an event, for misrepresenting poll results and Trump waited until the camera was off before exploding, “Fucking nasty guy!”—then finished up the interview as if nothing had happened. Trump and his inner circle are also, by Karl’s account, masters of timing, matching negative news such as the revelation that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election with distractions away from Trump—in this case, by pushing hard on the WikiLeaks emails from the Democratic campaign, news of which arrived at the same time. That isn’t to say that they manage people or the nation well; one of the more damning stories in a book full of them concerns former Homeland Security head Kirstjen Nielsen, cut off at the knees even while trying to do Trump’s bidding.
No one’s mind will be changed by Karl’s book, but it’s a valuable report from the scene of an ongoing train wreck.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4562-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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