Dimensions
205 x 135 x 15mm
Why Women Belong and Men Compete and How to Restore the Ancient Equilibrium.
For the first time in paperback - a powerful new analysis of human values, and how to recover the ones we have lost.
Our value systems are defined not by gender but by the systems in which we live - this is the controversial thesis of Carol Flinders's new work. In this post-feminist book, sure to appeal to both men and women, and to readers of Naomi Wolf and Deborah Tannen, Flinders shows how our values are not determined by whether we are male or female. Instead, our values come out of what we do, and how we live, not what we produce or what we control.
She divides value systems into those of the pre-agricultural "Belonging" world, which include: balance, mutuality, inwardness, self- restraint, tolerance, deliberateness, and intuitive and unitive ways of knowing, and the values of the industrial world of "Enterprise": individualism, competitiveness, hierarchy, materialism, exploitativeness, linearity, and either/or thinking.
Flinders argues that the Belonging values have been subsumed by those of Enterprise, leaving us feeling incomplete. By arguing that our values are not determined by our genders she breaks down that simplistic male/female paradigm and, in a nuanced discussion, provides the reader with a path toward incorporating the values we are missing in our lives for the sense of wholeness we all seek.
Flinders is one of the only writers who can speak to readers who look for a world where the spiritual and the political meet. This book, like Riane Eisler's 'Chalice And The Blade', will be required reading.
