Book Review: We the Men: How Forgetting Women's Struggles for Equality Perpetuates Inequality (OT)

We the Men: How Forgetting Women's Struggles for Equality Perpetuates Inequality, by Jill Hasday (Oxford University Press, 2025, 301pp, $34.99)

Well organized into four parts (Erasure, Distortion, Consequences, and Hope) and seven chapters, We the Men uses the introduction 'Forgotten Women' to expand upon these which also serves as an excellent review of the book.

On the other hand, We the Men is not a textbook. A textbook goes into great detail in explaining concepts while We the Men seems to include as many facts and quotes from source material as possible: think breadth not depth.

With a title like We the Men, author Jill Hasday could have penned an expose or an insightful treatise. Instead, we seem to have been given a list of quotes and facts, albeit put into paragraphs, about some wonderful topics, prime among them being the invisibility of women in, e.g.,  the media (newspapers and other print materials), due to credit given men even if belonged to women. Erasure. Fogetting. Period.

"How Forgetting Women's Struggles for Equality Perpetuates Inequality," the subtitle, makes perfect sense to serve as Hasday's thesis with chapters that can be read in just about any order.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

*I. Courts Ignore Women's Struggles for Equality

Remembering America without Remembering Women

II. Courts Declare Victory Early and Often

Popular Culture Announces Women's Emancipation

III. Courts Protect and Perpetuate Inequality

Anti-Feminists Capitalize on America's Misremembered Past

IV. Building on the Past to Create a More Equal Future