Freedom Feminism Its Surprising History and Why It Matters Today

by Sommers, Christina Hoff

• ISBN13: 9780844772622
• ISBN10: 0844772623
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2013-06-10
• Publisher: Aei Press

Summary

Women’s equality is one of the great achievements of Western civilization. Yet most American women today do not consider themselves “feminists.” Why is the term that describes one of the great chapters in the history of freedom in such disrepute?

In Freedom Feminism: Its Surprising History and Why It Matters Today, Christina Hoff Sommers seeks to recover the lost history of American feminism by introducing readers to conservative feminism’s forgotten heroines. More importantly, she demonstrates that a modern version of conservative feminism — in which women are free to employ their equal status to pursue happiness in their own distinctive ways — holds the key to a feminist renaissance. "Freedom Feminism" is a primer in the Values & Capitalism series intended for college students.

Author Biography

Christina Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. She was a professor of philosophy at Clark University from 1981 to 1996. Sommers specializes in ethics and contemporary moral theory and has published many scholarly articles in such journals as the Journal of Philosophy and the New England Journal of Medicine. Her textbook, Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life, currently in its ninth edition, is a bestseller in college ethics. She became known to the wider public as the author of Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women (Touchstone Books, 1995). Her book The War against Boys (Touchstone Books, 2001) received widespread attention and praise and was excerpted for a cover story in the Atlantic Monthly. It was included in the New York Times’ “Notable Books of the Year.” She also coauthored One Nation under Therapy (St. Martin’s Press, 2005) with Sally Satel, M.D., and is the editor of The Science on Women and Science (AEI Press, 2009). Sommers’ articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, USA Today, Weekly Standard, National Review, the Economist, the New Republic, and the American. The second edition of The War against Boys: How Misguided Policies Are Harming Our Young Men will be published in August 2013 (Simon and Schuster).

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Feminist Foremothers: The 18^th and 19^th Centuries
Mary Wollstonecraft: The First Feminist Philosopher
Hannah More and the Bluestockings
Frances Willard: “Saint Frances of American Womanhood”
2. The Second Wave: Since 1960
The Great Convergence
The Rise and Fall of the ERA
The Formidable Mrs. Schlafly
Women under Freedom
3. Contemporary Feminism and a Way Forward
Feminist Theory and Its Discontents
Feminist Ms.information
The Feminist Brain Trust
Conclusion