Woman’s Estate

“Juliet Mitchell's brilliant book from 1970 knew in advance that movements of liberation are linked, that economic analysis alone cannot fully describe oppression, and that recourse to feelings can only be a point of departure for analyzing social conditions and structures that produce women as a class… A new benchmark then and now for social analysis that thinks gendered life in its formative political and psychic conditions, and a persistent and compelling vision of the reflective alliances needed for overcoming oppression.”
—Judith Butler, author of Who’s Afraid of Gender?

Combining the energy of the early 1970s feminist liberation movement, with the perceptive analyses of the trained theorist, Woman's Estate is one of the most influential socialist feminist statements of its time.

Scrutinising the political background of the movement, its sources and its common ground with other radical movements of the sixties, Woman's Estate describes the organization of women's liberation in Western Europe and America, locating the areas of women's oppression in four key areas: work, reproduction, sexuality and the socialisation of children. Through a detailed study of the modern family, a re-evaluation of Freud's work in this field and an introduction written especially for this new edition, Juliet Mitchell paints a detailed picture of how patriarchy works as a social order.