Radically Speaking

If you want to understand the importance of feminism to the world, read this book!

I imagine this will be used in Women's Studies courses. It is also accessible to the general reader, even ones whose university days are long behind them!It is a very useful update on radical feminism - free of postmodern jargon (and positively hostile to post modernism in places. Little cheer from the sidelines on that score!)A whole section is devoted to an "interogation" of post modernism.It does offer material from a number of cultural perspectives, so is not at all dismissive of their eing different views and experiences of feminism.I think the editors are Australian, or at least worked there for long periods, and i think it shows. I have always found Australian feminism to be more eclectic, perhaps pragmatic, certainly less one-side posturing than some others. Australian feminists achieved a lot over the past 25 years, succeeding at infiltrating the very corridors of bureaucracy (a breed of bureaucrats known as Femocrats emerged). There were fundamental policy changes. Now rapidly being undone by a radically conservative govt. The need for feminism is not over, and this volume takes its place on the shelves, updating feminist thought and taking us back to the need to focus on the reality of women's lives. A good companion volume to Germaine Greer's The Whole Woman.