Difficult Women

Well-behaved women don't make history: difficult women do. Helen Lewis argues that feminism's success is down to complicated contradictory imperfect women who fought each other as well as fighting for equal rights. Too many of these pioneers have been whitewashed or forgotten in our modern search for feel-good inspirational heroines. It's time to reclaim the history of feminism as a history of difficult women.

In this book you'll meet the working-class suffragettes who advocated bombings and arson; the princess who discovered why so many women were having bad sex; the pioneer of the refuge movement who became a men's rights activist; the 'striker in a sari' who terrified Margaret Thatcher; the wronged Victorian wife who definitely wasn't sleeping with the prime minister; and the lesbian politician who outraged the country.