Women's Madness Summary

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Women’s Madness: Misogyny or Mental Illness? Women’s Madness: Misogyny or Mental Illness by Jane M. Ussher was the book I chose to study. The book was published in 1991 by Harvester Wheatsheaf. I chose Women’s Madness because I feel that women’s mental health is overlooked and mistreated. Ussher does a great job of acknowledging men’s madness, but also researching how a woman's health is affected by living in a misogynistic world. As the title suggests, the book is about finding the common cause of women’s mental health issues, and whether their issues are truly a problem of self or if they are caused by deep rooted misogyny. Women’s Madness starts off with an insight into Ussher’s childhood. She tells a story about how her mother had gone …show more content…

She went on to study psychology and treated both men and women, which gives her the validity to write this book. In Women’s Madness, Ussher brings up points from many other researchers and past/present cultural norms that prove women’s madness doesn’t stem from mental illness but instead stems from misogyny. Jane M. Ussher talks about the sociological concepts of gender and culture. She analyzes how much the differences in gender and how hatred and misogyny can affect one group (women). She also examines many different examples of norms in society that belittle women in distinct cultures. Both concepts go hand in hand throughout the book as misogyny plays a critical role in the influence of both. The concept of misogyny is important to Ussher’s discussion of gender. It is mentioned early on that women are seen as the “Other” and men are the “One”. This sets a huge divide between the two genders and is part of the reason as to why women are mad. The author goes into the detail of how misogynistic sexual assault and rape is and how it shouldn’t be misconstrued as men not being able to hold back their desire, but that it is a powerful

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