Everywoman: One Woman’s Truth About Speaking the Truth

Product Information

Even if you don’t agree with Jess Phillips’ political views at all, this is an important book to read and I would highly recommend it. It is so heartening to have a politician address the matters that affect women and, ultimately, the whole of society and to do it with intelligence and humour. You certainly don't need to have an interest in politics or agree with her policies to read this book. Not enough women are writing about politics and their own experiences, not only with honesty and personality, but with humour, too.

Everywoman’ is part memoir, part feminist manifesto and is an unapologetic telling of how events in Phillips’ life has shaped her feminist beliefs and her politics. Jess Phillips doesn’t actually discuss her political views to any great extent in this book, she primarily focuses on women’s issues, such as domestic violence, rape, the gender pay gap, and the ways that women are silenced in the work place.But her logic is lacking (if you think that is sexism at work, work through her logic and try again) and the little things annoy me too, keen to show she was cool when younger and never apologising for 'being who she is', as though modifying your behaviour to your environment is always just being put in your place rather than making life more pleasant. She speaks her mind (sometimes a little too much), but at heart, she seems to care about what she does, and genuinely wants to make a difference.

It’s hard to relate to that as someone who has never gone through it, but it’s not something that anyone should have to cope with. Just like some other books I’ve read, it feels a little presumptious to assume that the author is speaking on behalf of all women, we all have such different experiences that you can’t just generalise, but this one wasn’t as bad as some others.She asks the most difficult questions of herself and her party and here she shows how scary and sad as well as joyful and liberating the answers can be. It was pretty hard to deal with some of the sections, like when she talks about some of the horrific trolling that she has had to encounter. test but making sure you’d end the evening having put the world to rights but lost both your shoes and your dignity. So it’s kind of irrelevant if I thought some of the segues between arguments could have been a bit neater.

I am feminist/political book junkie and Everywoman rises above a crowded field because it is totally unpretentious. is an easily accessible, no frills, no feminist/political academic jargon publication which allows us, the general public, to get on board and see politics transparently - which it bloody well should be.

Other chapters are darker, detailing Jess' time working for women's aid, stories of abuse and domestic violence. She unearths a fascinating story about a fisherman's wife, Lillian Bilocca, who campaigned in the 1960s for safety on British trawlers after the death of fifty-eight fishermen. This is required reading for anyone interested in gender relations, who thinks the patriarchy is a thing and who wants to understand how it works, what they can do to combat it. the murder of Jo Cox, her experiences of trolling, as well as issues that affect many women such as weight, body image and the everyday sexism women may experience at work. I suspect Everywoman has been rushed out (misspellings such as Sheryl Sandberg’s name hint at that), but that’s my only niggle.