Published in 2017
208 pages
Cynthia Enloe has investigated the global garment, trainer, banking and banana industries, domestic work, diplomacy and militarism. The author of 14 books, her work has been translated into many languages. She regularly appears on National Public Radio, Al Jazeera, C-Span and the BBC.
What is this book about?
This is a manual for taking us to the finishing line of gender equality. A jolt of new energy for longstanding feminists and a ‘must read’ for our new generations.
For over a century and in scores of countries, patriarchal presumptions and practices have been challenged by women and their male allies. “Sexual harassment” has entered common parlance; police departments are equipped with rape kits; more than half of the national legislators in Bolivia and Rwanda are women; and a woman candidate won the plurality of the popular votes in the 2016 United States presidential election.
But have we really reached equality and overthrown a patriarchal point of view?
The Big Push exposes how patriarchal ideas and relationships continue to be modernized to this day. Through contemporary cases and reports, renowned political scientist Cynthia Enloe exposes the workings of everyday patriarchy—in how Syrian women civil society activists have been excluded from international peace negotiations; how sexual harassment became institutionally accepted within major news organizations; or in how the UN Secretary General’s post has remained a masculine domain. Enloe then lays out strategies and skills for challenging patriarchal attitudes and operations. Encouraging self-reflection, she guides us in the discomforting curiosity of reviewing our own personal complicity in sustaining patriarchy in order to withdraw our own support for it. Timely and globally conscious, The Big Push is a call for feminist self-reflection and strategic action with a belief that exposure complements resistance.
