A Woman's Work
CBC Books | CBC | Posted: December 6, 2017 10:16 PM | Last Updated: December 6, 2017
Harriet Harman
When Harriet Harman started her career, men-only job adverts and a 'women's rate' of pay were the norm, female MPs were a tiny minority — a woman couldn't even sign for a mortgage. But, she argues, we should never just be grateful that things are better now. There's still more to do.
In A Woman's Work Harriet, Britain's longest-serving female MP, looks at her own life to see how far we've come, and where we should go next. This is an inspiring and refreshingly honest account of the part she has played (and the setbacks along the way) in the movement that transformed politics and women's lives — from helping striking female factory workers to standing for election while pregnant, from her memories of her own mother to her success in reforming the law on maternity rights, childcare, domestic violence and getting more women into parliament. But it is also a call for women today to get together and continue the fight for equality. If we don't, no one else will. (From Penguin Random House)
From the book
There were four daughters in our family in St John's Wood, north-west London. Born in 1950, I was the third. We were all roughly two years apart and, though it was a house full of girls, there the similarity with Little Women ended. Family life for us children was dominated not just by our closeness but by our intense competitiveness. It felt like both a blessing and a torment to be part of a group of sisters who were all so near in age. I couldn't imagine what it must be like to be an only child, like the girl up the road we were friends with. I pitied her and thought she was being described as a 'lonely child'. It seemed so normal to fight constantly that I was baffled when my mother lost her temper with one of my elder sisters, Sarah, for throwing a knife at me as we carve balsa wood.
From A woman's Work by Harriet Harman ©2017. Published by Penguin Random House.