SOURCE: Sage, Lorna. “Mother's Back.” London Review of Books 22, no. 10 (18 May 2000): 37-8.

In the following review, Sage contrasts Moi's early feminist theories with the themes of What Is a Woman?

Feminism is fiftysomething if you start counting from The Second Sex, and, like Toril Moi, a lot of academic women are taking stock. The good news is that wherever positive discrimination in favour of men has been suspended, there are many more women in universities than there used to be, as students, teachers and even tenured professors. What's been lost is the sense of connection with utopian politics. Part of the fiftyish feeling is to do with having to recognise that the future—that future, the classless, melting-pot, unisex, embarrassing one—is now in the past. Or, more painfully, that it has been hijacked by obscurantism and academic careerism, which often amount to the same thing.

What Is...