For her Own Good

Are women by their very nature as frail, as prone to disease, as vulnerable and as inept as the experts appear to believe? In For Her Own Good, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English dismantle 150 years of scientific and medical advice to women and ask why it was that women were apparently so eager to accept the opinion of 'professionals' on every aspect of their lives - be it health care, childcare, motherhood, diet, housework, or sex. Were the rules and logic of scientific progress, supposedly working for the good of humanity at large, as impartial as they were claimed to be? Or were the expert opinions in fact just another weapon in the arsenal of patriarchy - an effective device to subjugate adn neutralise women? Ehrenreich and English supply a fascinating perspective on female history in this brilliant account of pundits and their victims over the last century and a half.