There’s never been a better time to be a woman. Thanks to those feminists who fought for liberation, young women today have freedom and opportunities their grandmothers could barely have imagined. Girls do better at school than boys and are more likely to go to university. As a result, women are taking more of the top jobs and the gender pay gap has all but disappeared. Yet rather than encouraging women to seize the new possibilities open to them, contemporary feminism tells them they are still oppressed. Women vs Why We All Need Liberating from the Gender Wars challenges this stance, unpicking the statistics from the horror stories to explore the reality of women’s lives. It argues that today’s feminism is obsessed with trivial issues – skinny models, badly phrased jokes and misplaced compliments – and focuses on the regulation of male behaviour, rather than female empowerment, pitching men and women against each other in a never-ending gender war that benefits no-one. Feminism today does women no favours and it’s time we were all liberated from the gender wars.
Author
Dr Joanna Williams is Head of Education and Culture at Policy Exchange. She is an author, commentator and the associate editor of Spiked. Joanna began her career teaching English in secondary schools and Further Education. She started working as a lecturer in Higher Education and Academic Practice at the University of Kent in 2007. She was Director of Kent’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education until 2016. Joanna is the author of Consuming Higher Education Why Learning Can’t Be Bought (Bloomsbury, 2012) and Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Her most recent book is Women vs Feminism (Emerald, 2017). Joanna has written numerous academic journal articles and book chapters as well as being a frequent contributor to national and international debates on education, feminism and gender politics. She has given many guest lectures, most recently speaking at the Universities of Bonn, Cologne, Leiden and the Freie University in Berline. In America she has lectured at St Olaf College, North Dakota State University, the University of San Diego and California State University, Fullerton. She has addressed the Institute for Humane Studies and the National Association of Scholars. Many ideas from Joanna Williams' articles and publications have inspired young people to do their research. College students can quickly achieve academic freedom with an essay writing service. The concept of freedom of education and expression remains a topical issue in 2020, and Joanna has made a significant impact on the development of higher education in the United States. Joanna’s writing has been published widely in the UK and the US including The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Spectator, The Guardian, The New York Post and American Conservative. Joanna writes and speaks about a range of issues including schools, gender, feminism, children and families. She has appeared on BBC 1’s Sunday Morning Live and Daily Politics and has reviewed the newspapers for Sky News. Joanna has been a guest on Radio 4’s Moral Maze and Broadcasting House as well as Radio 3’s Night Waves.
