As Natasha Walter says, three quarters of book reviews are by men. But this is not true of books by or about women, and almost all the reviewers of her book have been women. Many have been not simply critical but abusive, recalling Oscar Wilde's remark that women call each other sister only when they have called each other a lot of other things first. She had to send a letter to the Guardian to correct various false impressions: "Contrary to the way my views have been represented by both friends and enemies in the media... I argue that women today do not need any directions about how to live their personal lives. Instead, I argue that feminism now can become less personal and more political. I explore the reality of women's continuing poverty and powerlessness, and sketch an agenda for achieving economic and political equality." (3rd March 1998). Indeed, anyone who has read the book and its reviews may wonder whether Sydney Smith's celebrated warning against reading books before reviewing them-"because it prejudices one so"-has become a set text in journalism courses.
Enough of the reviews. What about the book? The point is that it is not only for women, but for young women. (Perhaps literary editors should have excluded reviewers of the wrong age as well as the wrong sex.) The author is young, and she has written for even younger readers. The quality of her manner as well as the quantity of her material mark the whole book, and apart from the elegance and confidence of her style, the youthfulness and hopefulness of her approach make it especially attractive. I am young enough to be attracted by it, and I agree with most of it; but I am too old to agree with all of it, and I have three main disagreements.
My practical disagreement is about children. The biological differences between men and women and the psychological differences between parents and outsiders make it difficult to establish a formal system of caring for children outside the family. In the old days the children of richer women were looked after by poorer women, and this seems to be what would be involved by most new plans for "childcare" (a cant term). So, while I am sympathetic to attempts to enable young mothers (and fathers) to do other things, I am suspicious about most of them, and I am not satisfied by her arguments.
My theoretical disagreement is about success. The fact that women have become president or prime minister, director of public prosecutions or head of the security services, members or even Speaker of the House of Commons, is no better than becoming models or millionaires or murderers. I would have hoped that women would reject so-called success in the male world, which I see as the worst kind of failure. But this is a minority, even an individual view.
My historical disagreement is with the title of the book. Of course the word "new" always sounds good; but what is new isn't always better than what is old, and what is called new isn't always new at all. I find little new in the New Feminism, and I think that what Natasha Walter is advocating could really be called the Old Feminism. She refers to previous waves of feminism-the suffragist movement of the early 20th century, the women's liberation movement of the late 20th century. But there were many waves before and between, and when she rightly calls on women to learn their history she wrongly ignores too much of the long tide of the past.
The most attractive thing about the book, for a male reader, is her emphasis on the place of men in feminism. She dedicates it to her partner, begins by thanking both her parents, and remembers in it several of the men who have been associated with the women's movement. Here she could have looked further back to traditional feminism, which is where I start.
Several of my female relations were strong feminists (one grandmother worked for Helen Zimmern and later for Virginia Woolf), and although most of my male relations were less so and although I spent much of my early life in all-male institutions, I grew up assuming that women were equal to men. This is also assumed by the movements I have been involved in-pacifist, anarchist, humanist. (I even took some part in the feminist movement, though usually anonymously or pseudonymously.) I discovered long ago that I get on better with women than men, and I remember how pleased I was when Kingsley Amis wrote (however insincerely):
Women are really much nicer
than men:
No wonder we like them.
Hence my general attraction to and occasional disagreement with the book. My conclusion is that what is needed is not so much a new cause as a renewal of a good old cause. It is an amazing phenomenon. Few believed in it a century ago; and almost none two centuries ago. The first item in the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Citizen (1791)-"Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights"-is generally taken for granted now. Olympe de Gouges died partly for writing it. Her descendants have followed her by living it. Natasha Walter has taken one more step along the way. Good for her.
The new feminism
Natasha Walter
Little, Brown 1998, ?17.50
