Fighting Women

"The book contains a major statement on the comparative study of women--violence, aggression, and their psychosocial impact on women's lives."--Gilbert H. Herdt, University of Chicago "Few gender stereotypes are more ubiquitous, even among feminists, than those portraying men as physically aggressive and women as their vulnerable victims. In this provocative, carefully researched exploration of women's anger and aggression in an Aboriginal community in Australia, anthropologist Victoria Katherine Burbank exposes the cultural limits and implications of such views. Burbank found that in Mangrove the women fight nearly as much as the men, and there are no battered women. Her nuanced, measured approach to this explosive subject is the most intelligent, original, and salutary contribution to a cross-cultural understanding of women and aggression I have ever encountered. Scholars, educators, parents, policymakers, and women of all ages have much to learn from Fighting Women. "--Judith Stacey, author of Brave New Families