Review: Reclaiming the F-Word by Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune (Zed Books, 2010)

The same word can mean very different things to different people. For some of us the word ‘feminist’ provokes thoughts of liberation, equality, partnership and challenging oppression. For others it has associations with angry women who are anti-men, anti-family and the cause of most of what’s wrong with today’s society!

Catherine Redfern runs The F Word website and Kristin Aune is a sociology lecturer who has published books on women and the church. They both have a long history of active involvement in feminism, and were puzzled by the disconnect between the media portrayal of feminism as dead and buried and the grassroots activism that they were aware of. They surveyed people who called themselves feminists to find out the ‘what, why and how of the new feminist movement and what it has to say to women’s lives today.’ The result is this book which compares the seven aims of today’s feminists with the original demands of the 1970’s women’s lib movement, looking at how things have changed and the work that still needs to be done.

Each chapter looks at one of these areas, for example liberated bodies, an end to violence against women, politics and religion transformed and equality at work and home. Catherine and Kristin explore each of these issues in depth, and list the ways in which feminists are active in this area, finishing with suggestions for further action and including lots of quotes from their survey and from key texts. The notes include a comprehensive list of sources which lends weight to the arguments and also provide excellent suggestions for further reading a study.

I did wonder whether every example of activism they give is truly feminist in terms of philosophy or motivation, because I know one of the campaigns they list isn’t – it just happens to have the same outcomes. But that’s a minor quibble with an excellent and informative book, that I hope will educate people about feminism as a movement and the challenges that we still face.

Jenny Baker is the director of the Sophia Network and acting festival director of Greenbelt.