4.0

This is an important book about the ongoing campaign to free women from the workplace threat of sexual violence and abuse that culminated in the #MeToo Movement (finally) that unseated offenders like Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, and a who’s who of abusive men in power. Hirshman traces progress in the three tracks of this battle: the law, electoral politics, and the culture. She has plenty of blame to spread around, for women not having made more progress, but liberal Democrats get special scorn for having betrayed their own values repeatedly by trading protection of women’s rights for electoral success. Only now have women themselves—particularly white women—started to become less equivocal about standing up for *all* women, so that their preference has started to reward anti-abuse candidates, but the author hints that there is much more work to do. Kate McKinnon is a special hero in this battle, as are women of color. Hirshman’s attempts at spritely writing—“for crissakes,” is one annoying example—mar the book, as do repeated non sequiturs. But the story is an important one, and her research is solid; I’ll look forward to a follow-up in a decade.