Woman’s Estate

Society professes to believe in equality.

Yet, as women come forward to claim what they are supposed to have, the contradictions between ideals and practice are revealed; the depth of discrimination is exposed; the revolutionary consciousness of oppression is born.

From within the politics of Women’s Liberation Juliet Mitchell defines the specific areas of oppression and describes current attempts to break the pattern of repression imposed on all women. In this stimulating analysis of a movement which has many links with student radicalism, hippy ideologies and Black Power, and which cuts across class and race barriers, she discusses the central theoretical debate between feminists and Marxist-socialists on the nature of oppression. Only when these conflicting viewpoints have been harmonised, she argues, can women go ahead and formulate a successful revolutionary strategy.