Printable Biography of Susan Faludi

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Susan Faludi's Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women was praised by Publishers Weekly as an "eloquent, brilliantly argued book that should be read by everyone concerned about gender equality." The book was her monumental investigation into the backlash against feminism in the 1980s and the assault against career-minded women. A bestseller, Backlash established Faludi in the tradition of towering Feminist authors: she stood with Gloria Steinem on the cover of Time, while Newsweek said the book was "as groundbreaking as Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique."

In her latest release, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post 9/11 America, Faludi gives us an unflinching dissection of the mind of America during the war on terror. In probing and accessible prose, Faludi boldly explores how our media and our politicians responded to the terrorist attacks by calling for a return to a society where men are men and women are victims—and how this thinking, rooted in our earliest mythologies, has made America a weaker and less secure place. "This is a book that had to be written," writes Barbara Ehrenreich, "and only Susan Faludi could do it so brilliantly and engrossingly."

Faludi is a winner of The Pulitzer Prize and The National Book Critics Circle Award. She has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Nation and The New York Times, and is also the author of Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. In her popular talks, she challenges modern stereotypes and explores the way gender roles have changed and developed in America in the past few decades. Encouraging audiences to re-evaluate their own views and convictions, she shows them what work remains to be done for true equality to be achieved.

SPEECH TOPICS

The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post 9/11 America
In this original presentation, Susan Faludi examines the strange fever dream America fell into after September 11th, with the media, popular culture and politicians calling for a revival of manly men and a traditional domesticity where women are viewed as victims. Cutting through the misleading rhetoric found in the press, and past the swaggering machismo that characterizes our current administration, Faludi shows us how our deeply-ingrained beliefs about masculinity, femininity and sanctified violence have shaped not only the national psyche during the war on terror—but also how these beliefs are themselves at the core of the mythology surrounding American culture, a myth of cowboy bluster and feminine frailty, which is reanimated whenever threat and shame looms.

Why Feminism Still Matters
In this engaging talk, Faludi identifies—and deconstructs—the unconscious and dangerous backlash against the progress and hard won achievements of the women's movement. Some argue that Feminism has been a dismal failure, for both men and women, blaming Feminism for everything from divorce, to an increase in crime, to the crisis in education. Still others maintain that Feminism has had its day and the battle has been won. Faludi, however, shows both these attitudes to be misguided. Feminism is alive and well, and has indeed achieved a great deal, but the struggle is not over. She identifies countless barriers to equality and points to cultural forces that continue to inhibit the ability of women to make informed choices for the lives they want to live. Faludi's absolutely necessary talk is a historical analysis of the progress women have made, a damning critique of the current state of equality in America, and a call to action, for men and women everywhere, to strive for freedom and fight injustice.