02 Jun 2013 03:33:07
Books that you might call post-feminist abound at the moment. Joan Smith, a respected heavy-hitter in the feminist arena, and a better writer than most, starts The Public Woman, her latest, by deploring the glorification of celebrity glamour-girls (well, not really girls, though they doubtless wish they were) and the sexualisation of under-age fashion. But the strong and important core of her indignation is the way that young women, and not just vulnerable immigrants, are grossly exploited sexually, here in Britain, now. We know about domestic violence, the way that rape victims can be demonised and disbelieved, but there's hardly an outcry, as there should be, about the amount of what is effectively sexualised slavery that goes on.
Smith doesn't make the contrast, emphasised by Alison Wolf in The XX Factor, between the increasingly fortunate and empowered women in important jobs, with rights and freedoms that would have been unheard of 100 years ago, and the women worldwide who are no better off than ever. But she makes one realise the way that serious and important rights that most of us take for granted are distorted or marginalised for a large and alarming number of women – and she writes well enough to make you stick with this uncheering but seriously important book. She quotes, and everything in the book emphasises, Hillary Clinton's dictum: that "women's rights are human rights" – which are in no way universally enjoyed, even here.
