Book Review: Of Women
1. If you could choose your sex, for you or your only child, would you choose a boy or a girl?
The book begins with this jarring question. It describes one of the main differences between the sexes is sexual organs. So, the need or desire to procreate combined with capacity for and function of childbirth and rearing.
Once upon a time many feminists thought that accessible and effective contraception, reproductive rights, medical advancements and more general sexual autonomy would liberate women. Yet for a host of reasons, this has not come to pass
2. The difficulty the world has in giving both sexes and genders equal consideration, and the struggles that people who do not identify as either face in this same world.
The book outlines how some feminists might see a trans person who migrates from either side of the sex border as somehow reinforcing the notion of women being the “second sex”. Yet surely a trans persons journey might just as easily be viewed as highlighting a more fluid border, whose oppressors and injustices we might aspire to erase to the point where the category of “human” finally becomes the most inclusive.
To be too harshly exclusive in defining and policing the oldest opposed category of “women” is ironically making the sex and gender divide even harder to dismantle. To jealously protect our particular type of victimhood is ultimately to make harder our escape.
The author, Shami Chakrabarti, at this point highlights something that has completely blown me away with its simplicity but its significance - she states her instinct in coming to this view is from a human rights perspective. If we are all humans first and foremost, our cause as seekers of justice and equality is surely not to compete with any among us for victimhood or biological or social purity.
At the end of the day, no matter what your background or identity, everyone is just trying to make their way and feel safe in a less than perfect world.
3. Misrepresentation
The book highlights some gut wrenching statistics. At the age of seven an equal number of boys and girls in western democracies want to lead their country. That proportion of girls drops dramatically by the age of fifteen.
The book cites that in January 2017 there were just 19 women heads of state or government out of around 200 countries in the world. unwomen.org confirms that as of Sept 2025 there are just 29 countries that have a women as head of state or head of government.
At the current rate, it will take 130 years to reach gender equality in the highest positions of power.
4. Wealth and Production
The book references an Oxfam report from January 2017 ‘an economy for the 99%’ and cites President Obama’s final address to the UN General Assembly in Sept 2016 which includes the following line “A world where 1% of humanity controls as much wealth as the bottom 99% will never be stable”
8 men own as much as 3.6 billion people that make up the poorest half of the human race.
The book goes on to highlight the polarization of different types of labour and the scarcity of women in economics.
So many sectors that women dominate in are of a caring nature (teaching, nursing etc). What story does a country tell its children if their care and education - even outside the home - is overwhelmingly provided by women? What does it signal to boys in particular? Imagine the benefits of positive social policy intervention to attract more men into that kind of work?
Layer upon this the consideration that as soon as labour is divided in communities and societies, primitive or modern, someone decides whose labour counts - and that someone is usually a man. Work that is essential but unpaid becomes the greatest eater of time.
Layer further again, facts like in circa 30 countries in the world, daughters do not have the same inheritance rights as their brothers and widows fail automatically to inherit land homes from their deceased husbands.
With, land and property forming up to 75% of a nations wealth, its no wonder women find themselves disproportionately amongst the poorest on earth. “Women own less than 20% of the worlds land and yet more than 400 million of them farm and produce the majority of the worlds food supply” (Monique Villa - Thomson Reuters Foundation).
5. Female menstrual health and Male mental health
Where there is poverty, be it in the first or developed urban or rural world, poor girls and women face an additional and significant economic hurdle when it comes to menstruation.
UNICEF estimates that 1 in 10 schoolgirls in Africa do not attend school while menstruating.
When the UN’s eight millennium development goals of 2000 were replaced by the seventeen sustainable development goals of 2016 there were goals on both “good health and wellbeing” and “gender equality” but no longer a stand alone goal of improving maternal health.
When looking at equality, its important to look at the expectations we all have around what is “normal” or “healthy” male behavior.
If you were brought up to believe that a “real man” is a strong, brave or even competitive and aggressive breadwinner outside of the home, how do you adjust to being out of work or out of a sufficiently secure remunerative or prestigious job while others (usually in the form of women or foreign nationals) appear to make advances or simple demands?
Men may never have been guided, taught or socialized to share emotional burdens by confiding in friends, colleagues or loved ones. In instances like these, how much greater is the risk of it exploding into profound depression, rage, violence or suicide.
6. Can automation help?
Many increasingly seem to fear that automation will inevitably put millions maybe billions of people out of work and wealth. The book poses an interesting take on the potential to harness automation to the greater good while investing in peoples living standards, well being and more paid work in caring for one another. Why can we not use automation to leverage valuing each other more?
7. Aptitude, Behavior, Confidence
In early school years, boys were reported to be significantly less engaged in their education and more liable to end it early without qualifications. They were more likely to describe school as a waste of time and to be all round low-achievers.
Yet when it comes to numeracy and mathematics the picture is startlingly different. With girls significantly underperforming compared to boys in most countries.
Further research shows that young men are highly likely to make up the literacy gap after leaving school (presumably by taking greater interest in their own choice of reading, or as a result of further study / employment).
Women are less able to address the deficit in numeracy and mathematics by themselves.
Research shows girls doing better or worse in maths tests, depends on what they are told about their future. They do worse if they are told they are being compared against boys.
The book “Lean in” describes a social psychological phenomenon that supports this finding, called “stereotype threat”. That is, when members of a group are made aware of a stereotype, they are more likely to perform according to that stereotype e.g. when girls are told that boys are statistically better at maths than girls. When girls are also reminded of their gender before a maths test, even if it’s an innocuous as ticking an M or F box on the test exam paper, they perform worse.
8. There remain over 100 million young women in the world who cannot read and write, and women and girls are still more likely than men and boys to be excluded from education.
9. There is a heartbreaking chapter in the book called “insecurity” referencing findings and sheer staggering statistics from UNICEF and UN reports of the violence that women around the world are subjected to. It highlights the stark differences between what can be a once dimensional view of feminism and inequality, verses the very many intersections of it that some women experience It’s sobering, necessary and important reading.
10. I will leave you with an interesting observation the author makes in this chapter, that is that in the UK, it was predominantly a male and privileged judiciary that first protected women in England and Wales against rape within marriage. One judge spoke in the House of Lords that he had few boasts to his name, but that being part of that ruling was one.