…and I should not have read this right after Eve 🤦🏼‍♀️ This book calls itself a history of the world but is overwhelmingly focused on white, western civilization. Other countries and cultures do get mentions but they felt more like after thoughts to support the overall narrative. This also included often avoiding digging into the ways women passed on their own oppression or wielded their power to oppress other women (the handling of the women rights movement and Margaret Sanger were particularly egregious). Often I thought it The Creation of the Feminist Consciousness and thought it did it better (both on explicitly limiting its scope and examine the contributions of women) though I do understand why a more accessible book would be warranted. Overall, if you want a book to browbeat you with how much it has sucked to be a white woman (with passing references to how much it sucked to be a woman in general) this will definitely give you plenty of that. But I didn’t appreciate the read. (Granted, it’s been a long month, I might just be burned out 😅)

It ultimately took me forever to finish the book.

Starting out u really loved how incredibly broad the focus of this book was and ultimately I was a bit disappointed that it did mainly focus on white English speaking women. I do still think that it’s a good place to start and that it helped me reconsider a lot of things I perceived as unquestionable truths before.