Assesses women's leading and still largely unknown contributions to the development of human civilization and refutes the myth that women have always been subordinate to men.

Historical roots of the women's movement shown through a discussion of the family structure in ancient matriarchal societies.

What does it mean to be female? Sarah Blaffer Hrdy--a sociobiologist and a feminist--believes that evolutionary biology can provide some surprising answers. Surprising to those feminists who mistakenly think that biology can only work against women. And surprising to those biologists who incorrectly believe that natural selection operates only on males. In The Woman That Never Evolved we are introduced to our nearest female relatives competitive, independent, sexually assertive primates who have every bit as much at stake in the evolutionary game as their male counterparts do. These females compete among themselves for rank and resources, but will bond together for mutual defense. They risk their lives to protect their young, yet consort with the very male who murdered their offspring when successful reproduction depends upon it. They tolerate other breeding females if food is plentiful, but chase them away when monogamy is the optimal strategy. When "promiscuity" is an advantage, female primates--like their human cousins--exhibit a sexual appetite that ensures a range of breeding partners. From case after case we are led to the conclusion that the sexually passive, noncompetitive, all-nurturing woman of prevailing myth never could have evolved within the primate order. Yet males are almost universally dominant over females in primate species, and Homo sapiens is no exception. As we see from this book, women are in some ways the most oppressed of all female primates. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is convinced that to redress sexual inequality in human societies, we must first understand its evolutionary origins. We cannot travel back in time to meet our own remote ancestors, but we can study those surrogates we have--the other living primates. If women --and not biology--are to control their own destiny, they must understand the past and, as this book shows us, the biological legacy they have inherited.

This book presents the results of Heide Goettner-Abendroth's pioneering research in the field of modern matriarchal studies, based on a new definition of «matriarchy» as true gender-egalitarian societies. This new perspective on matriarchal societies is developed step by step by the analysis of extant indigenous cultures in Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

In this epic drama of personality and politics, passion and ambition, courage and betrayal, Marcia Cohen tells the fascinating inside story of the feminist revolution through the lives of the women who made it—and were sometimes unmade by it. Focusing on Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, and Kate Millett, The Sisterhood is a revealing group portrait of the women whose ideas and actions have so profoundly transformed us all. This classic account traces the women’s movement from its quiet birth in the 1960s through its startling triumphs in the 1970s and its troubled legacy in the 1980s. Today, everything seems possible for women as they function on an equal plane with men in nearly every walk of life. But the revolution was hard won. Now the irreverent, entertaining chronicle that reveals all the well-kept secrets of feminism, with a thoughtful new foreword by the author, appears in a special edition that serves as a riveting social history, casting light on an entire era so important for women as well as men.