The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy

Leading feminist analyst Cynthia Enloe asks why patriarchy is proving to be such a sustainable cultural, institutional and economic system. Decades of feminist campaigning have resulted in real advances - a woman newsreader is no longer unusual; many police departments are equipped with rape kits; more than half of the national legislators in Bolivia and Rwanda are women; a woman candidate won the popular vote in the recent U.S. presidential election. And yet patriarchy continues to thrive. From the institutional acceptance of sexual harassment within major news organizations to the exclusion of Syrian women from international peace negotiations, this book is a fierce and incisive exploration of patriarchal culture and how we are unwittingly sustaining patriarchy - for example, by falling into the celebrity trap, imagining that tourism is without consequence or casually using ungendered concepts (e.g. ‘child marriages’) to make sense of the world. With grace and energy, and in the most accessible and inviting prose, Cynthia Enloe reflects on examples from her own life and the experiences of women from around the world, to show that only by asking ‘where are the women?’ and making women’s experiences visible, can we engage effectively in civic life and make sense of today’s global politics.