This is a rich text, from which I learned a great deal. Lewis tells the stories of a number of women of whom I had never heard. The book is, overall, a good introduction to the systemic nature of the patriarchy (in the UK, at least) and a demonstration of how it remains embedded in today's social structures. I like the premise of 'Difficult Women': that we need to avoid flattening histories or "cancelling" pioneers in our understanding of feminist progress. Indeed, to do so plays into the anti-feminist idea that women must be perfect, quiet and, crucially, not difficult. There are elements of Lewis' feminism with which I disagree and these often appear in those (few) moments where her voice feels louder than others. Mostly Lewis is good at passing the mic and presenting key issues as open-ended debate. She is both pragmatic and forceful in her prose, and I think that the full breadth of her personality comes through in her narration of the audiobook.

Feminism isn't a single idea, and is interpreted differently by every individual and their experiences. 'Difficult Women' never professes to be the definitive guide to what feminism is, but rather it is a book that is just one interpretation and one voice. However, what it does do is link a number of historical battles and difficult women together, distilled into 11 categories spill into the modern feminist era. I took a lot away from from this. From the different women that are given a fresh voice, to hearing how each of them define how they view feminism or their fight for equality was incredibly facinating. None of these women are perfect, all are difficult, and all of them are complicated individuals.

Some of these women included Annie Kenny, who was deeply involved in the Suffragette movement. Exasperated at lack of movement towards women's votes, she moved towards more extreme forms of activism in a heavily male dominated legal system. Any woman who fought for these rights was played down, brushed off as unimportant. Helen Lewis really helped bring to life what Annie Kenny was a person, a working class woman who just wanted to have what men had, and has somehow been left to fall into obscurity because she never fitted the Suffragette narrative of this upper class, well spoken woman.

There's also Marie Stopes, who was one for the first to grant access to birth control to desperate women. Her clinics granted women a degree of sexual liberation they'd never seen before, yet she was also incredibly snobbish, conservative, anti semetic and anti lesbian. She believed in eugenics and was also vehemently against abortion. Difficult women are not perfect, and sometimes their agenda, although good for the masses, is undertaken for selfish and flawed reasons.

The chapter of time was perhaps the most personal for me. It talks of the divergence of pay between men and women in their 30s, as women move to part time and unskilled work in order to take on the role of motherhood and child carer as this is what society has come to expect of women. Women as a result have less downtime, and less free time in general compared to their male counterparts because society often makes us feel guilty into doing the majority of the housework and organising. Our time never seems to be our own, and this rang so true for myself as a mother.

Interesting deep dive into some facinating 'difficult women' that helps open the doors into further research on feminism and equal rights.

My red flags were raised in Helen Lewis' opening rant about cancel culture in which she brings up bloody Germaine Greer as one of its victims. After that, I did some digging on the author and found out she is one of those British terf journalists who I cannot stand. I read some of her articles to see what her views were for myself and my opinion of her shot even lower. I have no intention of reading the rest of this book and I will not support terfs or their so-called 'feminist' books.

I listened to the first chapter of this book, and had every intention of moving on with the rest, but NetGalley has released audiobooks with glitches. The audiobook would not play any other chapters, so I’m giving this book a standard three stars.