Woman’s Estate Book Review

Juliet Mitchell’s Woman’s Estate traces early feminist theory and women’s liberation in Western Europe and America. This critical commentary, released in 1971, uses second-wave feminist vigour to identify not only advancements in women’s rights and freedoms, but also the social structures and patriarchal backgrounds constraining them. Though over fifty years old, this book is ever relevant in a time when the achievements and ongoing work of women’s liberation and associated movements are under explicit threat- felt increasingly in America. Mitchell takes new steps for the 1970s, going beyond economic considerations and drawing on – in addition to class considerations – reproduction, sexuality, and socialization. Mitchell does not completely neglect complex dimensions of women’s liberation, referencing Black power movements while combining analysis of class and sexuality, though it leaves room for more overt analysis of race and colonization within this context that will come in later decades with the coining of intersectionality by Crenshaw. The emphasis on apparent freedoms versus how these liberations actually operate within the patriarchal society of the previous century is eye-opening and resonant with our neo-liberal society. With increased participation in the workforce by women came a perceived increase in rights and freedoms. Mitchell analyzes how this is not really the case. Women pushed into the work force by the needs of men cannot achieve a class consciousness that serves to uplift themselves through economic and social achievement because of the independence that is void in this inclusion. Woman’s Estate has stood the test of time, though readers should bring more evolved notions of intersectionality and current political climates into their considerations.

Reviewed by Lily Beaulne