Why Feminism?

Segal surveys the impact of feminist thought and activism on contemporary culture. Three decades after the remarkable resurgence of feminism, both critics of the movement and feminists themselves hold sharply opposing views on the success or failures of three decades of women's activism. Exploring feminism's troubled relations with psychology and psychoanalysis, the rise of new evolutionary theory, the impact of queer theorizing on gender categories, controversies over memory and trauma, and increasing anxieties about men and masculinity, Why Feminism? illustrates the continuing provocation and significance of feminist inquiry, laying out potentialities and pitfalls for the century ahead.