SOURCE: A review of Backlash, in American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 99, No. 3, November, 1993, pp. 824-25.

In the following review, Fink offers a positive summary of Backlash.

Susan Faludi’s account of the backlash movement [in Backlash] is thorough indeed. Although the war against American women may be undeclared, it is difficult to deny the pervasiveness of its battles. Faludi enumerates many efforts to limit women’s roles by those who would silence women’s newfound voice in modern American society. The protagonists described by Faludi want to revert women back into the silent ideal, seen but not heard.

Faludi points, first, to the role of the media in this campaign, but she also identifies other significant social actors such as academics, dress designers, Washington bureaucrats, and politicians. Many perceive a threat to their power as women become more active in the paid labor force and, more important, in...