Portside

On the feisty congresswoman’s posthumous return to the spotlight. Abzug’s encounters with sexism pushed her toward feminism, and so did the support she received from female constituents and supporters after she was elected.

The review slams four female writers for misdiagnosing the alienation attendant to contemporary women's roles by urging changes in behavior without analyzing the work/household dynamic and persistent gender inequality, preferring either a retreat into so-called womanly roles or encouraging masculine-style individualism. They ignore redefining attitudes toward care and care workers, and securing for them social recognition and material support.

While a sharp contribution to discussions of women's oppression and liberation, the book under review is faulted for not demonstrating the actual radical connection between class and other forms of oppression. While rejecting a tendency to reduce Marxism to a one-dimensional critique of class, the book's author is faulted for downplaying the limits of intersectionality as not articulating--but instead fudging--the existing gulf between identity politics and Marxism.