This volume draws on the experiences of daily life to analyze the many guises in which intimations of inferiority are conveyed to women. The author shows how women are recruited to an idealized, yet finally disempowering, femininity. Three main themes emerge in the essays - the ways in which a systematically depreciated female identity is produced and reproduced - the war between the emancipated and unemancipated aspects of the female self - and the transforming character of consciousness-raising, which allows women to gain insight into the oppressive character of patriarchal culture and to begin inventing new paradigms of self and society.