Book Review: "Women Who Make the World Worse" by Kate O'Beirne (2006)

Lawyer and journalist Kate O'Beirne tears down all of the sacred cows, gender-bending theories, phony statistics, and articles of faith around the issues of equal pay for work of equal value, abortion, day care, education and sports as pushed by activists such as Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem and Pat Schroeder.

It's a quick read which I think could have functioned quite well as a series of articles rather than a book. O'Beirne's goal here is not to advocate a return to the Ward and June Cleaver days but basically to point out the flaws in logic and tactical excesses of the radical feminist movement. Not intellectually stimulating and more a polemic than a researched academic study (see Christina Hoff Summers' "Who Stole Feminism?" for that), O'Beirne nevertheless provides a few head-shaking moments as she goes through the various attempts made over the years to pussify America's male population. I won't recount them all here, but one point that she does make which is exemplary of her line of argument throughout concerns the number of firefighters on 9/11 who were hired due to gender quotas or had to face a special and lighter standard for physical fitness because of their sex.

Answer: none.

Good thing for those who escaped mass murder on that day thanks to their heroic efforts that the FDNY is one public sector organization that doesn't try to paper over the inherent differences of the sexes, no?

Overall rating: 7/10