"A timely, original, and truly useful contribution... This is a good book--humane, practical, and deeply reasonable. It exhorts us to take our fate into our own hands, reminding us of the unprecedented power that women now have,while still acknowledging the obstacles that face us. This is a woman who loves men and competes with them hard, loves women and no doubt competes with them hard, but also knows that they are her allies. Her voice is clear, yet nuanced. If your feminism has been snoozing, this will make it sit up."--Suzannah Lessard, The Washington Monthly

What do women want？ The answer to Freud's famous question, though obscured by rumors of the death of feminism, is obvious: everything. It's now high time, Susan Estrich argues, for women to demand just that which means sizing up what power they have and seizing more of it.There is a revolution to finish, this veteran feminist urges, as she looks around and finds far too few women at the top in America, or even on the fast track headed there. Estrich speaks up as a Second Wave stalwart ready to replace the current watchword of overextended womanhood ambivalence--with a new rallying cry: ambition.

Sex & Power is, what else, ambitious.It's full of inspirational vigor, and full of argumentative rigor, too. For Estrich, proselytizing means analyzing, which saves her from sound~g too preach)< She supplies plenty of personal stories, and she has plenty of statistics of how far women have yet to go... What's called for now, she says, is collective action by women themselves, who can use their dout as consumers and as voters to push for more women on corporate boards, in top executive positions, in public office. On the inside...women have risen high enough to rely on joint pressure. Once they are a bigger force to conjure with, women can lobby to do what neither moralism nor the market seems likely to accomplish, certainly not any time soon:which is, as Estrich sees it, to change [the] rules...

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

1. In the Middle of a Revolution

2. On Being Extraordinary

a. Equal Under the Law

4. The Facts of Life

5. Motherhood as Destiny

6. The Comfort Factor

7. Changing the Face of Corporate America

8. Sexual Power

9. Political Power

10. Changing Ourselves

Bibliography