Just Like a Woman: What Makes Us Female Book

Health journalist Dianne Hales examines in Just Like a Woman, the implications of recent studies which indicate real differences between men and women. Western culture, from Aristotle onwards, has regarded women as defective men. And a medical science that still in some sense sees them as "the second sex" is always going to assume that symptoms mean the same in men and women, that drugs will have the same effects and that healthy organs function in precisely the same way. None of this is necessarily true. Hales writes in a lyrically preachy style about the need for women to develop self- esteem and to respect and love the female body and mind as they are:"A woman from Hong Kong describes herself--and other Asian women--as bullets wrapped in marshmallow, deceptively soft and yielding on the outside, yet steel-tough on the inside. An Italian journalist compares being a woman to being a goalkeeper in a soccer match--eyes scanning everywhere, body poised to move in any direction, ready for any possibility. An American thinks being like a woman is not unlike driving her pickup truck. 'It rides hard so you feel every bump in the road.'" Hales takes her arguments from primate studies--we are the creations of evolution, and it is always worth examining how else we could have been--from more accurate modern measurements of pulse rates and hormonal effects, and from recent brain studies. If she has a weakness, it is that she underplays the role and extent of variation in both sexes. Overall, though, this is a powerful and attractive book full of useful information and flattering rhetoric. --Roz KaveneyRead More