'Buy it for yourself, your husband or partner. Most importantly, buy it for your children' Sunday Express

Essential reading from Catherine Mayer, recently named one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Global Policy on Gender Equality.

Not a single country anywhere in the world has achieved gender equality. In more than a few countries, progress for women has stalled or is reversing. Voters in the United States chose a misogynist over a female candidate for President.

Yet in many of these countries, the majority of politicians and business leaders profess to believe in gender equality-as well they might. One report predicts a boost to global GDP of GBP8.3 trillion by 2025 simply by making faster progress towards narrowing the gender gap. Researchers point to many other potential benefits too, not least in improved relations between the sexes and a healthier, more peaceful planet.

If gender equality promises benefits not just to women, but to everyone, why aren't we embracing it? And how can we speed the pace of change? Fewer than nine percent of world leaders are female, but the few women who have broken through include towering figures such as Angela Merkel. Could 50-foot women save the day? These questions have gripped journalist and author Catherine Mayer since she accidentally founded the Women's Equality Party in March 2015 and watched it grow in months from an idea to a vibrant political force with more than 70 branches across the UK.

In ATTACK OF THE FIFTY FOOT WOMEN, her insightful, revelatory, often hilarious, and hugely inspiring book, she tackles those questions and many more, sharing inside views and experiences from building a party, and bringing together global research with analyses and interviews based on her own far-flung research.

And she goes further. Campaigning for the Women's Equality Party ahead of elections in May 2016, she noticed that many people found it hard, in the absence of any real-life examples, to envisage a gender-equal world. So she takes us there, to the place she calls Equalia. What is it like? Does gender equality make for a society that is more equal in other ways too? Who does the low-paid jobs? How does gender express itself in a place freed from gender programming? What's the sex like? What's on the telly?

For some fascinating answers and brilliant thought experiments-and a blueprint for reaching Equalia-read ATTACK OF THE FIFTY FOOT WOMEN.

About the Author

Catherine Mayer was born in the US but now lives in London. She is a former editor at large of TIME magazine and the author of the Sunday Times bestselling biography of Prince Charles Charles: The Heart of a King.

In 2015 she co-founded the Women's Equality Party with Sandi Toksvig and was named on the Evening Standard's 2016 Progress 1000 list comprising London's most influential people.

Reviews

"Comprehensive, wide-ranging and journalistically rigorous. Attack of the 50Ft Women is an important and timely book. Buy it for yourself, your husband or partner. Most importantly, buy it for your children" Sunday Express

'If you're male, and don't think you need to read this book, that's your received culture talking, and it isn't doing you a favour. If you're male or female, do yourself and the future a favour: read this book.' William Gibson

"Barnstorming" Red magazine

"An inspiring, revelatory and often hilarious journey to explore the merits of a gender-equal society" Glamour

"Empowering and full of hope, Attack of the 50ft Women made me feel 50ft tall. Glass ceilings beware." Sarah Shaffi, editor at The Bookseller and writer for Stylist

"Electricfying. Full of chutzpah, knowledge and vision." Elif Shafak

"Compelling and deeply researched... Presents the multiple benefits of a gender-balanced world" Lisa Randall, New York Times bestselling author of Warped Passages

"[Catherine Mayer] occupies a well-informed, fully-engaged middle ground [and] quickly gets to the main issue- endemic exploitation, "discrimination, harassment and sexual violence" perpetrated by men and boys against (overwhelmingly)
women and girls [...] provid[ing] concise, painful examples of perpetrators' seeming impunity even when charged for their crimes. [Attack of the Fifty Foot Women] is a weapons store for the battles ahead." Times Literary Supplement

'A tour de force of feminist polemic, forensic research drawing on data from across the globe and some fabulously funny anecdotes' Wales Online

Book Information
ISBN 9780008191153
Author Catherine Mayer
Format Hardback
Page Count 352
Imprint HQ
Publisher HarperCollins Publishers
Weight(grams) 590g
Dimensions(mm) 240mm * 159mm * 33mm