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REVIEW
Women on the Defensive: Living Through Conservative Times explodes some widely-held beliefs about women and women's movements under Conservative and Republican leaders. Feminism underwent perhaps its most difficult challenges in the 1980s, when conservatism reached the height of its influence in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Prevailing accounts of the fate of women's movements in that decade ascribe their hardships to a postfeminist ideology or the result of a "backlash" against women, particularly in the US. Sylvia Bashevkin's study excavates, however, a much more complex situation. By identifying the policies and goals held in common by feminists in all three countries and tracing their collision course with the conservative policies of the three governments, she is able to document setbacks but also some progress, despite the right-of-centre leaders. She also challenges the assumption that organized interests in the United States are less vulnerable in hard times than those in parliamentary systems, finding that the elections of Ronald Reagan, Brian Mulroney and Margaret Thatcher had similar effects on both sides of the Atlantic. Her comparative analysis reveals that the policies of current leaders, while marginally better than those of their predecessors, will not allow women and women's movements to regain lost ground.

Organized thematically, rather than by country, Women on the Defensive describes the difficult relationship between feminists and conservatives during a time of bitter ideological and policy battles when the vibrant social movements of the 1960s and 1970s were seriously threatened.

Women on the Defensive: Living Through Conservative Times was published in 1998 by the University of Chicago Press and, in Canada, by the University of Toronto Press.

From the Back Cover of Women on the Defensive: Living Through Conservative Times
Where have the vibrant women's movements of the 1960s and 1970s gone? Is the feminist struggle for equality over or only temporarily muffled? Many believe that the "backlash" of the 1980s sounded a death knell for contemporary feminism, but Women on the Defensive-the first comparative analysis of the intersection of government policies and the women's movement-paints a much more rich and complex picture of the greatly exaggerated reports of feminism's death.

Sylvia Bashevkin traces the fate of the women's movements in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain through the bitter ideological and policy battles of the 1980s. Her compelling analysis explodes some widely held beliefs about women and women's movements under the conservative leaderships of Ronald Reagan, Brian Mulroney, and Margaret Thatcher. By identifying the policies and goals held in common by feminists in all three countries and following their collision courses with conservative policies
of the three administrations, Bashevkin is able to document setbacks and, surprisingly, some progress. Women on the Defensive is unique in that it looks at the trajectory of women's movements not only through governmental and legal practices but also through the words of women activists, who have their own stories to tell about feminism in the 1980s. Bashevkin deftly combines individual voices with policy initiatives to provide the first complete picture of the recent past and uncertain future of contemporary feminism.
   
CONTACT Sylvia Bashevkin at University College, University of Toronto, 15 King's College Circle, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3H7, Canada. Email address: sbashevk@chass.utoronto.ca