I discovered Helen Lewis‘ ‘Difficult Women : A History of Feminism in 11 Fights‘ when I was browsing in the bookshop last week. There was only one copy in the bookshop and the book looked very fascinating and I couldn’t resist getting it.
In ‘Difficult Women : A History of Feminism in 11 Fights‘, Helen Lewis tries to gives us an unconventional history of feminism. She looks at feminism in the past 150 years through 11 different themes, or fights as she calls them. Many of the themes are familiar to us, like the right to education, the right to vote, the right to equal pay etc. But the fascinating thing about the book is this. Though Helen Lewis mentions some of the feminist pioneers, she mentions them mostly in passing. What she does is, she goes and searches for and discovers the feminists who were well known or who played important roles during their time, but who are forgotten today, either because they have complex, inconvenient histories, or they fell out with other prominent feminists and so have been written out of history, or they were not considered feminists during their time, or they have just been plain ignored. These are the difficult women that Helen Lewis writes about.
What follows is an wonderful list of amazing women and their inspiring achievements – like the footballer Lily Parr who was so famous for her football skills that she and her team used to draw crowds of 50,000 during the 1910s, Jayaben Desai who led one of the biggest worker strikes in the ’70s demanding better pay and benefits, Erin Prizzey who has been written out of feminist history today but who during her time ran the first refuges in Britain for victims of domestic violence, Maureen Colquhoun the first ever lesbian MP from Britain whom everyone seems to have forgotten now, Sophia Jex-Blake who alongwith six other women fought for the right of women to pursue a medical education and inspite of the universities trying every trick to deny them that education, how she and her friends finally won and became the first female doctors in Britain – the book tells the stories of these and other amazing women. When I read what Colette Devlin – who as a 67-year old, fought for abortion rights alongside two other friends, in Northern Ireland – said :
“I believe that I have a legal duty to uphold good law, but I have a moral duty to disobey bad law.”
I got goosebumps.
‘Difficult Women‘ is a beautiful, wonderful, inspiring book, which is guaranteed to make you angry and happy, and give you goosebumps. I am glad I read it.
Have you read ‘Difficult Women‘? What do you think about it?
Sounds fascinating. Love books which are off the beaten path.
It is a beautiful book. Hope you like it, if you decide to read it.
This sounds fantastic. Does the book have individual stories about these women?
Glad you like it. The book focuses more on the themes and the fights, but it does have the stories about the individual women in reasonable detail. Hope you like this book if you decide to read it.
Nice review! Will add it in my reading list.
That quote is everything, Vishy. It’s sad to realise that so many of these women are forgotten. And in times of social media, it is going to be even more difficult for the activists to stay relevant as too much is happening, there is barely any time to process all the great work that they do, and something new and urgent keeps sprouting up. Books like this one become even more important now. Thank you for sharing, Vishy. I, hereby, bestow on you the title ‘The Discoverer of Unknown Gems’. 🙂
Glad you liked that quote, Deepika. It gives me goosebumps everytime I think about it. Yes, it is sad that many of these pioneers who fought for equal rights are now forgotten. I loved this book for shining the spotlight on some of these forgotten feminists. Hope you like this book if you decide to read it. Happy reading!
Sounds excellent and I really like the idea she used women who are forgotten. That last quote is so true. I wish more people would think like this. A very relevant book. If my piles weren’t sky high, I’d add this to my collection.
That quote is so powerful, isn’t it? Glad you like the sound of the book. Hope you like it if you decide to read it.
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