Why Does Patriarchy Persist?

Review

“Taking on the long brewing battle between true democracy and the pervasive ‘ghost’ of patriarchy, this compact book exists in a category of its own. The voices of its authors are accessible, incisive and engaging—the perfect book to launch almost any conversation about our current messy psycho-political times.”Jill Gentile, author, Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire“An original and powerful analysis of patriarchy; there is a freshness and vitality to the authors’ approach. Why Does  Patriarchy Persist? should be compulsory reading in every discipline from law to literature, for it offers a framework in which numerous dilemmas, both practical and psychological, might be resolved.”Terri Apter, Newnham College, Cambridge"There are books that do what they set out to do: they make their points clearly, they argue something new, they uncover something for us. Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider’s new book, Why Does Patriarchy Persist?,  does more than that. It is a spark. It is something like a book-length speech act, both illocutionary and perlocutionary: in speaking, the authors bring their thesis into being, and with it a host of possibilities come alive within us. As we read, we believe intimately that what they say is so. We feel it and see it in our own lives; it cannot but leap up within us."The Public Seminar"Dr. Gilligan’s writing may frustrate because of its swirl of literary, personal and clinical anecdotes. There can be tangles and snarls of language. You might get lost in its allusions and references, particularly if you’re not up-to-date on your Sophocles, Old Testament tales or Woolf. But her voice on the page is as it is in real life: warm and inviting. Democracy, she said, is like love. It only works if everyone has a voice. Dr. Gilligan’s new book continues to try and universalize the intimate." New York Times