What Women Want Next

by Susan Maushart

Columnist, acclaimed author and social commentator Susan Maushart unsheathes her notorious wit and unerring sense of style on the knotty question of feminine fulfilment in a postfeminist world. What do women want from love and sex, marriage and motherhood, friends, family and career? And how much of it can we get?

When I was a teenager, she writes, I thought love would solve everything. In my early twenties I thought sex would solve everything. By my late twenties, I thought a career would solve everything.

At age thirty I thought marriage would solve everything, and then-when it didn't-I was sure that motherhood would. By my late thirties, following a brief period of certainty that therapy would solve everything, I became convinced that divorce would solve everything.

At forty I saw how absurd this all was, and decided to renovate.

So what do women want next? Find out in this blackly funny, sharply intelligent exploration of where we were, where we are, and where we're trying to get to.

'Witty, sharp and original, a woman men should listen to...Maushart extends a stylish invitation to listen.' Australian

Genres: Personal Development

260 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Columnist, author and social commentator Dr. Susan Maushart is a mother of three teenagers. For over a decade, her weekly column has been part of a balanced breakfast for readers of the Weekend Australian Magazine. Maushart is heard regularly on ABC Radio's popular online series 'Multiple Choice', and is a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Western Australia. Her four books have been published in eight languages, and her essays and reviews have appeared in a host of international publications. She holds a PhD in Media Ecology from New York University. Maushart's first book was the award-winning Sort of a Place Like Home, a history of the Moore River Settlement (later depicted in Philip Noyce's 2002 film classic Rabbit-Proof Fence). The bestselling The Mask of Motherhood was hailed by the London Times as "a feminist classic," and Wifework: What Marriage Really Means for Women started arguments right around the globe. Her book, What Women Want Next, looks at the question of feminine fulfilment in a post-feminist world.
She moved to Perth, Western Australia from New York 19 years ago but insists she is only passing through.

Reviews

[Elyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book because the author used her own struggles with seeking (and failing to find) fulfillment to explore what women want, what makes them happy, and what prevents them from finding contentment. She cites numerous research and studies to make her case. It was interesting to see the differences between genders and the challenges for women to create a meaningful life on their own terms rather than continually trying to adapt to the values of a dominant male culture.

In the final analysis the book did not deliver what I had hoped. I was seeking some clear cut solutions to the problems and issues that the author so expertly outlined. Maybe there are no easy answers, but I think greater focus (or more of an attempt) toward solutions might have helped. Also, like most contemporary books about feminism, the focus was mainly on middle and upper class women and not those women who really lack the luxury of so many choices.

[Frangipani · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just love Maushart's irreverent humourous style of writing.