Marxism and women’s liberation

Judith Orr, Bookmarks, 263 pages, £9.99

For most women, discrimination and oppression are still very much the lived experience today. While much has changed for women, too much has not. Women still earn around 18% less than men on average.

The latest financial crisis has hit working class people hard, but it has hit women the hardest.

Rising sexism and anger about sexual violence have led to an explosion of ideas and activity around the politics of women’s liberation.

This book looks at the history and source of women’s oppression and at the struggles to overcome it.

It draws on the history of the fight for women’s liberation, from an understanding of the roots of oppression to the debates that raged in the 1970s in the US and the UK, through to the Egyptian revolution and the debates that are shaping the movement today.

As austerity bites and new debates about oppression erupt, author Judith Orr steers a path through the history and future of the fight for women’s liberation with all its contradictions.

Marxism and women’s liberation looks at why women are more often to be found on the sticky floor of low pay than above the glass ceiling where the rich reside.

But more than that, it looks at the forces that have the power to change this and revolutionise women’s lived experience.

Reviews contributed by the Bookmarks socialist bookshop.

Order online at www.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk