Review: What Women Want
Editorial Review - Kirkus ReviewsIn this personable and inspiring autobiography, the controversial president of NOW succeeds (mostly) in presenting herself as an Everywoman who does know what American women want. As she tells it, Ireland's life is the story of the making of a feminist: She goes from being the Pan Am stewardess whose first battle was against the required pillbox hats that mussed up the required hairdos, to fighting Pan Am's insurance discrimination against married women, to succeeding as a corporate lawyer and then as a full-time feminist activist. When Ireland is recalling her experiences on the front lines of the gender wars--organizing Florida's pro-ERA movement, developing and participating in NOW's abortion-clinic defense strategy, meeting with Vernon Jordan to discuss president-elect Clinton's Cabinet--her tale is an energetic, passionate look at the inside of the women's movement. She shows her legal and strategic savvy in noting that it was she who developed the idea of using the anti-racketeering laws to stop antiabortion protestors from shutting down clinics; and for those who questioned NOW's singleminded focus on ERA in the early '80s, Ireland convincingly argues that the organizing that began in that fight led directly to the electoral successes of women in 1992. But she is less convincing, and less honest, when she attributes the hoopla over her intimate life (she is married and also has a relationship with a woman) to society's sexual repression of women; she refuses to consider that a man in public life with a similar arrangement would be equally skewered by the press. Further, while she alludes to internal arguments and divisions within NOW, she is, after all, still the organization's president and isn't about to wash its dirty laundry in public, making her story feel sometimes less than complete. Ireland is intensely smart, deeply passionate, deliciously outspoken, a woman who enjoys wielding power. Women ought to want to read this book.
Review: What Women Want
User Review - Erik Dabel - GoodreadsFirs the back story. This is one of the books that has been sitting on my bookshelf for years, never been read. I bought it for a class back in college, but then had a conflict and dropped the class ... Read full review
Review: What Women Want: A Journey to Personal and Political Power
User Review - Angel - GoodreadsI read this over the summer of 1998. I decided to read it after I listened to Ms. Ireland give a speech on campus the previous spring. The book expanded on some of the things she spoke about then, and it was interesting overall. Read full review
Review: What Women Want
User Review - Catherine - GoodreadsThis autobiography from the former president of NOW (National Organization for Women) in its heyday, is probably just a 3 star book, but I read it at a time when I needed an activist role model as an ... Read full review
