She: Safe, Healthy, Empowered : The Woman you're made to be

Rating:
Summary: Publisher's Weekly Review is Unfortunate...
Review: Publisher's Weekly Review is a bit unfortunate, and a little harsh on the book. Rebecca St James remains one of the top role models for young women these days, and her book, SHE, continues to set forth a good blueprint by which young women can attain the utmost for God's highest in all areas of their lives. Highly Recommend!

Rating:
Summary: Repackaged, Romanticized Oppression of Women
Review: This book weighs in on the important and urgent question of women's role in society and the world but is appallingly lacking in honesty or consistency.

If the authors are seeking answers from the Bible, if this is the divinely revealed "Word of God" which is the source of authority on the topic of women, then what gives them the right to pick and chose which parts of "Gods Words" they want to apply and which parts they want to ignore? They speak about "God's" desire for women to have a gentle and quiet spirit, but ignore how in the Bible this goes along with women being prizes of conquest, the instructions of how a whole town should come together to stone a woman if she is not a virgin when she is married, and there is no mention of all the generations of shame and abuse that have been rationalized through these kinds of passages.

Sure, there is a crisis on the role of women in this society. I agree with the book that Feminism has not fully addressed these needs. It is a worthy topic to tackle, the conflict between different cultural standards and expectations on women that leave us stuck, often, in a lose-lose situation.

But this book never examines or challenges the fact that the real problem is still that we live in an exploitative and oppressive society, which also exploits and oppresses the globe. Until that changes, women and others will not be free and equal - but the need is to go MUCH FURTHER than feminism has gone, not go backwards.

Especially appalling is the story of Rhonda, who's "mother failed to see and protect her daughter from sexual abuse at the hands of her father when Rhonda was a young girl...failing to notice what was happening right under her nose." That the blame for this heinous, yet rampant, type of abuse towards women and girls is blamed on the mothers is cruel, but worse - will never lead to solving these kinds of problems.

Of course, that is not what this book seeks to do. It explicitly accepts the general inequality and oppression of women and then seeks to counsel women of how to adjust our lives and dreams and expectations to accept this.