Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0553099523, Hardcover)

Meredith Maran is a bisexual feminist, a veteran of the antiwar protests of the 1960s, a former Marxist, and currently an adviser to green businesses. So when she challenges some of the most sacred tenets of feminist theory, people sit up and take note. Notes from an Incomplete Revolution asks some tough questions about the way women live, as opposed to the way feminism tells them they should live. Is there a biological underpinning to the different ways women and men think and behave, she wonders, or is it purely the result of social conditioning, as some feminists claims? Why, even in an age of unprecedented opportunity for women, do so many opt for jobs and lifestyles that allow motherhood to be their top priority?

Maran asks these and other questions, but she doesn't always answer them. Leaving the problem of biology vs. conditioning as the determinant in our lives, she focuses her attention on the real issue of interest to her: the gap between feminism and real life. As in any political or social movement, feminism has its orthodox faction, and perhaps it is this sect to whom Maran directs her reminder, "The point of feminism was to give women choices, not to dictate what those choices should be."