Second World, Second Sex

"An engaging narrative of feminist movements during the Cold War. . . . [Ghodsee's] work is vital in documenting a neglected component of feminist history while illuminating a new resource for feminist theorists and activists interested in thinking about the political project of gender justice outside the confines of dominant, Western, liberal feminism. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers." -- C. E. Rasmussen * Choice *
"Second World, Second Sex is a must read for anyone hoping to understand the complexities of a global women’s rights movement that goes beyond the boundaries of Western, liberal feminism." -- Tony Pecinovsky * People's World *
"A powerful reminder that ultimately structural conditions are of prime importance if women’s emancipation is to succeed. . . . Ghodsee’s book ultimately reminds as, through the often moving testimonies of former activists she has collected, that women’s activism, also when attached to or even dominated the state, can be effective and progressive." -- Tanja R. Müller * Twentieth-Century Communism *
"Interrogating why the activities of women in countries with strong states promoting gender equality should be deemed inauthentic vis-à-vis those in democracies that perpetuate patriarchal norms, alongside rendering the Cold War as a battle between not just capitalism and communism but also competing visions of feminism, Second World, Second Sex is essential reading for anyone in any field interested in women’s activism in the twentieth century." -- Christine Varga-Harris * Slavic Review *

“Besides offering a masterful reconstruction of Cold War women’s activism and East-South alliances, Second World, Second Sex provides its readers with extensive and previously uncovered historical documentation, together with important methodological reflections on feminist knowledge production. The book will be of great interest for historians of gender, transnationalism, and the Cold War, and will undoubtedly expand the scope of scholarly research on transnational women’s and feminist history.”

-- Chiara Bonfiglioli * American Historical Review *

“The Cold War’s end has seen the vision and achievements of the socialist women’s activists marginalized, devalued, and almost forgotten, the neoliberal consensus quickly undoing in the East and South many of the rights which had been so dearly won. Ghodsee articulates a concern that powerful forces in the West still conspire to suppress or delegitimize histories that take state socialist women’s activism seriously…. Ghodsee’s persistence and peerless scholarship have ensured that it will not be allowed to disappear from the mainstream narratives of feminism.”

-- Dominic Martin * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *
"Second World, Second Sex has to be strongly recommended not only to scholars in Slavic studies, feminist, gender and postcolonial studies, as well as international relations, but to all those who have high expectations of the current trend of re/connecting the feminist and the climate change movements, as well as the new global actions combating inequality, racism and violence against women and girls, as necessary actions to restore the political relevance to transnational women’s organizing efforts, as was the case in the 1970s and 1980s.” -- Renata Jambrešic Kirin * Wagadu *
“Ghodsee beautifully describes the relationships that she established with women’s activists throughout the course of her research.... This is why her book is so important: it challenges hegemonic accounts of both Cold War politics and the international Decade for Women.” -- Jennifer Erickson * American Ethnologist *
“Ghodsee makes her argument skillfully and with clarity. . . . This is an impressively ambitious book with an undeniably original topic and a bold argument.” -- Alexandra Ghit * International Review of Social History *