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jesszyx's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
naju's review against another edition
informative
fast-paced
4.5
a book for intense studying. it's an incomplete picture, as all are, but the introductions in the brazilian version help with that. don't have much coherent to say about it yet, i'm still in studying mode about it, but if this sounds even remotely like it could be interesting to you, pick it up.
biathebarely's review against another edition
3.0
It was ok. It repeated itself a lot but otherwise it had excellent historic information. It's not as one sided as i thought it was gonna be and i appreciated that.
jayeless's review
5.0
This book should really be divided into two parts, as the blurb suggests – the first two chapters provide a concise history of various workers' struggles (and revolutions) and their relationships to women's movements; the latter two (which are much shorter) provide an equally concise overview of various schools of feminist theory and Arruzza's opinions on the merits of each. I was mostly in agreement with those opinions – I found her takedown of Luce bloody Irigaray's "difference theory" particularly satisfying – and so I would certainly recommend this.
I did have a couple of points of scepticism, mostly in that Arruzza seems to feel that "patriarchal structures" or "male structures" have a more solid existence than I would argue. It's hard to say this for sure because given the nature of the book, she tended to describe trains of thought that weren't her own and wasn't always that hard on them, so perhaps this exaggerated the impression I got. Nonetheless… I felt she gave too much credence to the idea that there are these parallel structures of capitalism and patriarchy, when "patriarchy" is really more of an ideology that justifies the oppression of women that's been going on since the rise of class society. "Patriarchy" in that sense is not a structure in and of itself, but an ideology borne of structures that is used to reinforce those (and other) structures. They're not "dual systems" but different things – different types of thing – that interact with one another.
One thing that Arruzza said again and again was that she didn't feel it was "useful" to argue for a hierarchy of oppressions, although class is not an oppression. I still agree that trying to subsume class into gender or gender into class is undesirable and unhelpful, but there were these kinds of theoretical statements I disagreed with, I guess.
Even so… this was an excellent overview of history and theory surrounding the question of how these two movements intersect, regardless of how Arruzza's theory ever so subtly differed from my own. It's very readable, concise and well-structured too, so no impenetrable academic language to struggle through and give you a headache. I knocked it off in an afternoon! Good stuff.
I did have a couple of points of scepticism, mostly in that Arruzza seems to feel that "patriarchal structures" or "male structures" have a more solid existence than I would argue. It's hard to say this for sure because given the nature of the book, she tended to describe trains of thought that weren't her own and wasn't always that hard on them, so perhaps this exaggerated the impression I got. Nonetheless… I felt she gave too much credence to the idea that there are these parallel structures of capitalism and patriarchy, when "patriarchy" is really more of an ideology that justifies the oppression of women that's been going on since the rise of class society. "Patriarchy" in that sense is not a structure in and of itself, but an ideology borne of structures that is used to reinforce those (and other) structures. They're not "dual systems" but different things – different types of thing – that interact with one another.
One thing that Arruzza said again and again was that she didn't feel it was "useful" to argue for a hierarchy of oppressions, although class is not an oppression. I still agree that trying to subsume class into gender or gender into class is undesirable and unhelpful, but there were these kinds of theoretical statements I disagreed with, I guess.
Even so… this was an excellent overview of history and theory surrounding the question of how these two movements intersect, regardless of how Arruzza's theory ever so subtly differed from my own. It's very readable, concise and well-structured too, so no impenetrable academic language to struggle through and give you a headache. I knocked it off in an afternoon! Good stuff.
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