Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong—and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story

The author is consistent in the structure of her chapters. She always explores both sides of a particular argument, including interview bits and data from several scientists and studies on both sides of the discussion. This is, in principle, a good and noble way to explore a subject, but in practice it made the chapters extremely long, sometimes quite boring and hard to get through. I get that she’s a journalist and this is a non-fiction book that’s supposed to explore the science around women and feminism and all the ideas and principles that have been associated with them throughout history, but there must be a way to structure the information so it is easier to understand and more engaging for the reader. Frequently I found the chapters, while interesting and with lots of relevant and important information, to be super infodumpey. They often felt like a shopping list of arguments and scientists names around a certain topic, instead of a structured narrative meant to make you think about things.

Overall, I liked this and I think it’s an important piece of non fiction to read because it includes a ton of information on subjects that would be hard to read in such detail by oneself. However, I didn’t love the structuring of the book, it could have been more effective and engaging in the way it was organized, and the writing style felt a bit dry (which is partly expected, but not necessary, in a non fiction book).

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challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.0

"We sometimes imagine sexual equality to be a modern invention, a product of our enlightened, liberal societies. In actual fact, anthropologists have long known that the way women are treated throughout the world wasn’t always like this." - Angela Saini (Inferior, chapter 5)

This book is just absolutely amazing! Super accessible while also being fact heavy, it is the perfect blend of science, history and feminism; which is exactly what I want from any book! I do still think that you should read it with a pinch of salt, like how you should with every nonfiction book, but Angela Saini really has a fantastic writing style and I wish more pop science authors would write like her because reading this book was addicting.

I learned so much from this book alone and I think everyone should read this, not just feminists (although I do think that this is also another must-read feminist book in my opinion) but literally everyone, this book will make you re-think a lot about what many news articles might have mislead you to think about the biology, history, and just overall science of women. This book is superior, in my opinion, and it deserves its high ratings for me.

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