Our Treacherous Hearts

So much appears to have improved for women. In theory they have equal pay and opportunity; working mothers are no longer stigmatized; women are moving into the highest levels of politics. Yet in many fundamental ways, little has changed. It is still mainly women who take care of dependents, interrupting or downgrading their careers to do so. Women continue to relinquish privilege and power to their male partners, and seem happy - at least at first - to make sacrifices for their children.

Are women really victims of a backlash against their newfound freedoms? Did feminism underestimate the satisfaction women get from mothering? Or is there evidence of a deeper complicity through which women keep themselves from breaking with traditional roles?

Our Treacherous Hearts looks at women's collusion with male domination. Drawing from revealing interviews on women's feelings about men, children and work, Rosalind Coward explores why working women still do the majority of housework and childcare and are grateful for even small contributions by men, and why women leave good jobs to be at home - and then find that their supposedly idyllic time at home isn't as simple as they expected.

As startling as it is compelling, Our Treacherous Hearts is an honest appraisal of what's really happening in contemporary women's lives and psyches. In the United Kingdom, Our Treacherous Hearts was an Evening Standard bestseller and the basis of a television documentary, "Seeking Approval: The Complicity of Women," also written by Rosalind Coward.