ALSO BY CATHERINE MAYER

Charles: The Heart of a King

Amortality: The Perils and Pleasures of Living Agelessly

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Catherine Mayer 2017

Catherine Mayer asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008191160

‘Comprehensive, wide-ranging and journalistically rigorous. Attack of the 50ft Women is an important and timely book. Buy it for yourself, your husband or partner. Most importantly, buy it for your children.’

Sunday Express

‘If you’re male, and don’t think you need to read this book, that’s your received culture talking, and it isn’t doing you a favour. If you’re male or female, do yourself and the future a favour: read this book.’

William Gibson

‘Barnstorming’

Red

‘An inspiring, revelatory and often hilarious journey to explore the merits of a gender-equal society.’

Glamour

‘Empowering and full of hope, Attack of the 50ft Women made me feel 50ft tall. Glass ceilings beware.’

Sarah Shaffi

‘Compelling and deeply researched… Presents the multiple benefits of a gender-balanced world’

Lisa Randall

‘[Catherine Mayer] occupies a well-informed, fully-engaged middle ground [and] quickly gets to the main issue – endemic exploitation, discrimination, harassment and sexual violence perpetrated by men and boys against (overwhelmingly) women and girls … provid[ing] concise, painful examples of perpetrators’ seeming impunity even when charged for their crimes. [Attack of the 50ft Women] is a weapons store for the battles ahead.’

Times Literary Supplement

‘A tour de force of feminist polemic, forensic research drawing on data from across the globe and some fabulously funny anecdotes.’

Wales Online

To sisters, mine especially.

And in memory of Sara Burns, Sarah Smith, Michael Elliott and Ed Victor.

If we were socially ambisexual, if men and women were completely and genuinely equal in their social roles, equal legally and economically, equal in freedom, in responsibility, and in ‘self esteem’, then society would be a very different thing. What our problems might be, God knows. I only know we would have them. But it seems likely that our central problem would not be the one it is now: the problem of exploitation – exploitation of the woman, of the weak, of the earth.

URSULA LE GUIN

‘Is Gender Necessary?’, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1976.

Contents

Cover

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Introduction: The Shoulders of Giants

Chapter One: Gate-crashing the club

Chapter Two: Votes for women

Chapter Three: All womankind

Chapter Four: Being a man

Chapter Five: Home economics

Chapter Six: What really shocks me

Chapter Seven: Frozen out

Chapter Eight: This should be everyone’s business

Chapter Nine: Unbelievable

Chapter Ten: Adam and Eve and Apple

Chapter Eleven: Winter wonderland

Chapter Twelve: Equalia welcomes carefree drivers

Acknowledgements