Sisterhood is Powerful : an Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement

by Robin Morgan

Here is the first comprehensive collection of writings from the Women's Liberation Movement, including articles, poems, photo-graphs, and manifestos. This anthology captures the range of problems being considered by the new feminists, and the variety of approaches to analysis and action. Over fifty contributors, all women, write about how the "51% minority group" is used and abused by the major institutions of our society--marriage, the family, church, courts, the media, welfare, the schools, the professions, business, and industry. A section on the psychological and sexual repression of women attacks the freudian view of the female, and discusses the problems of the aging woman, abortion and birth control, prostitution, the persecution of lesbians. Black women, a Mexican woman, high school women, ex-New Leftists, housewives, and seasoned feminists speak from their experience in tones that range from detachment to outrage.

ARE MEN REALLY THE ENEMY?
A Questionnaire by Jayne West, from No More Fun and Games

True or False
__ Woman's work is never done.
__ You can't tell a book by its cover.
__ Housework can be fun.
__ A female dog is referred to as a bitch.
__ One of the more degrading terms that can be applied to a man is "son of a bitch."

Multiple Choice

1. Most rapes are committed by: (a) women; (b) children; (c) men (perverts); (d) I am unable to distinguish rape from ordinary sexual relations.

2. Which do you prefer being called: (a) lady; (b) woman; (c) female; (d) girl; (e) none of the above.

3. If I could do away with anything I wanted, the first thing I would do away with is: (a) the family; (b) the state; (c) private property; (d) menstrual periods; (e) all of the above.

Essay

Discuss the variations in tone possible when asking a male druggist: "Have you Tampax Super?"

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, History, Politics, Essays, Womens, Gender

Unknown Binding

First published September 1, 1970

About the author

An award-winning poet, novelist, political theorist, feminist activist, journalist, editor, and best-selling author, Robin Morgan published 21 books, including the now-classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful , Sisterhood Is Global , and Sisterhood Is Forever . A leader in contemporary US feminism, she also played an influential role internationally in the women’s movement for more than 25 years.

Morgan traveled — as organizer, lecturer, and journalist — across North America and Europe and to Australia, Brazil, the Caribbean, Central America, China, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Nepal, New Zealand, Pacific Island nations, the Philippines, and South Africa. She twice (1986 and 1989) spent months in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, West Bank, and Gaza, reporting on the conditions of women.

Her books include the novels Dry Your Smile and The Mer-Child A Legend for Children and Other Adults ; nonfiction Going Too Far , The Word of a Woman , and The Anatomy of Freedom . Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Russian, and Sanskrit.

As founder and president of The Sisterhood Is Global Institute and co-founder and board member of The Women’s Media Center, she co-founded and served on the boards of many women’s organizations in the US and abroad. In 1990, as editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine, she relaunched the magazine as an international, award-winning, ad-free bimonthly, resigning in late 1993 to become consulting global editor. She was a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Prize for poetry and numerous other honors.

Reviews

[Kate]

Lest we forget,every woman's ability to own a home, have a credit rating and have a crack at an executive position is due to the sacrifice and hard work of the feminists of the 60's and 70's. This book is a time piece and testament to their efforts. You go, girls!

[Anne]

No one remembers this one anymore. It helped me to stay and continue to believe in the written word, though I do not now hold that belief...50years is a long time to read!
As radical and old fashioned as this is, I'd still encourage young women (and old) to "peruse" it, and every once and again, read hard.

[Jessica]

I'm re-reading this now, and it's remarkable to me how fresh so much of it still is, that is if you look past the 1970s-era lingo. That's not necessarily a good thing. What came as the greatest surprise, after 40 years of being indoctrinated by the myth of the humorless feminist, is just how witty and snarky the movement sisters could be.

[Lynn]

I read this book as an 18 year old freshman at a catholic women's college in 1970. It changed my life for the better and baptized me into womanhood. I shortly left that nunnery. :)

[Celeste]

VERY worthwhile. When I first started it, I was taking it as a historical book, and was interested in learning about the women's movement at that point in time. What was interesting (and depressing) was that I often forgot I was reading a book published in 1970.

Abortion is still a political issue. We still have bridal culture, we still have Miss America. There's still the problem of child care, and there are not nearly enough women in leadership roles in the workforce. And women are still underpaid. (Just to name a few!)

The documents from WITCH (Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell) are excellent, and the essays from the lesbian community are very moving, powerful. By the end of the book though, I was still haunted by Lucinda Cisler's questions from her essay, "Unfinished Business: Birth Control and Women's Liberation":

"Will new developments simply make us more efficient sex machines in a world of unchanged sexist domination?...Will women now cease being instruments of production only to become equally passive instruments of diversion? Or will birth control help liberate us by freeing us, for the first time, to realize our full human potential and with it to change society?"

[Elaine]

This book was formative and empowering to my thinking and understanding of feminist issues when I read it in the 70s. In fact, I think it was life changing in that it articulated what it is that women deal with.

[Caty]

2nd wave 101--in a good way

[Jean Perry]

Wonderful introduction to feminist issues. All feminists were reading and discussing it in the 1970s

[Paulatics]

This is one of the first books of the second wave of the women's movement. Very important collection.

[Agnieszka]

First as a general statement, I found this book was still relevant to the development of my feminist thought. With a collection like this you get a diversity of voices, which I appreciate. There is a boldness in second wave writing that was missing in feminist thought for a long time with the cheerful populist 3rd wave and extremely complex academic 3rd wave. Only recently with intersectional feminism in online spaces have I seen anything close to this kind of brave facing of the world and radical calls for change.

Second, historically, this book is huge for me. Seeing the origins of second wave feminist thought all like this just fantastic.

In short, one of my favorite books of second wave feminism.

[nicole]

BAM! The politics of orgasm is something everyone should read. Male or female.

[Stephy]

I am old enough that when I read this book, all this was new and eyeopening and fabulous and, as we said then, "mind-blowing" This is the book which helped me start to be a real person. It was a book I and all my friends were reading and discussing, having AHA! moments about, learning that I was depressed so much because I was oppressed so much! It was the beginning of my political awareness of the status of women in the world. Phillis Chessler (Author of "Women and Madness", another life changing book for me) should have received credit for the Bibliography, and there was an unpleasant legal sorting out, in what I realize now was the court of men, not women.

[Kjersten]

A classic staple for feminist literature. Though I didn't find every essay stunning nor scholarly structured in "Sisterhood is Powerful", the collection of information regarding the oppression and historical context of women throughout the ages (mostly concentrated in the United States, though lightly touches global circumstances) is a critical read for women (and men!) who are desiring to better understand the politics of feminism and how it remains relevant and ever needed in our modern society. Emotional, political, empowering. I would recommend this book to any feminist regardless of its age.

[Zola]

Some of the essays in this anthology were a little dry for my personal taste, but this book is an EXCELLENT look back at the women's lib movement. I get the feeling that feminists my age (what wave are we on now? Third? Fourth?) forget our roots, apathy & complacency set in, and we end up conceding more than we ever intended. This is a good book to pore through and remember that the fight has come a long way, but is far from over.

[Ryan Mishap]

The classic. It is well worth reading for its own sake, but also interesting to compare the problems confronted thirty or forty years ago with today to compare and contrast. What has changed and what remains the same? Indeed, what has gotten worse in the fields of misogyny, sexism, etc.?
Also checkout Sisterhood is Global.

[Magdelanye]

Occasionally I notice a recommendation on these pages and this book I have already devoured, decades ago. This looks like the same edition. I wonder how it would read today?

Back in the day, I remember being a bit frustrated with excerpts, but on the other hand it was a good jumping off point as well as a reference.

[Oshun]

A classic! And, the nostalgia! A huge part of my life and also friends of mine at the time contributed articles. (It came out shortly before I met them.)

[Creolecat]

Another book found in the trunk. My sister gave this to me when I was about fifteen. My copy is torn, dog-eared and highlighted. I wouldn't trade my copy for the world; too many memories.

[Nicolas Lontel]

Une fascinante anthologie de textes écrits à la fin des années '60, début années '70 où (pas mal) toutes les femmes parlent de pas mal tous les sujets. On parle de la place des femmes dans les jurés, de l'enfantement, du racisme, du sexisme, il y a des chansons, des poèmes, des slogans, des références, des femmes de tous les horizons parlent, y compris des femmes de d'autres pays qui parle de la condition des femmes et du féminisme dans leur pays et leur perspective, des textes de toutes les sortes, très académiques et référencées à des textes plus libres, le travail d'anthologie de perspective de femmes ne pourra jamais être exhaustif, mais en lisant tous ces témoignages et recherches, on n'a pas l'impression d'avoir fait le tour, mais on a clairement l'impression d'avoir vu un panorama impressionnant de perspectives.

J'ai honnêtement du mal à comprendre l'absence de traduction ou même de rééditions, ce livre est fascinant. À mettre dans les livres féministes à lire pour quiconque s'intéresse à l'histoire du mouvement et aux témoignages, littéraires et autres, qu'il a laissé, mais aussi pour prendre conscience de l'oppression des femmes à cette époque, de leurs questionnements et réflexions, mais aussi de voir le chemin qui a, parfois, été accompli depuis. Wow, juste wow comme anthologie.

[Nalim]

Sisterhood is Powerful (1970) an anthology of radical feminist writings edited by Robin Morgan - It is the first comprehensive collection of writings from the then-newborn contemporary wave of feminism. It became a best-seller in both cloth and paperback, its red-and-white cover with the feminist symbol (designed by Morgan) becoming a recognisable graffito around the world.

[Kathleen]

My love of this book is purely nostalgic. I read it as a teenager and it opened my world to new ways of thinking. I'm sure that, were I to read it today, I'd find fault with many of the ideas it contains, but at the time that I read it, it was exactly what I needed, and reading it felt like such an act of rebellion!

[Zoe]

Fantastic. A great cross section of feminist theory before capitalism bastardized it. A couple moments of a couple essays haven't kept up with the times, but for the most part this is still disappointingly truthful.

[Cherie]

A- Great history of 2nd wave

[Ricky]

classic.

[Karin Lippert]

Started the revolution...

[Michele bookloverforever]

reread after many years....Still apt

[Paula]

Still relevant. Still needs to be read today.

[Marisa]

40+ years old and surprisingly pertinent.

[Nea Poulain]

Irregular, pero interesante, en general.

[Danielle]

Great variety of content and relevance.