Women's Equality Party co-founder pens 'illuminating' book

HarperCollins imprint HQ is to publish Attack of the Fifty Foot Women, an "exciting and inspiring" book by author and co-founder of the Women’s Equality Party, Catherine Mayer.

HQ executive publisher, Lisa Milton, acquired world rights from Ed Victor as one of her first actions when she joined HarperCollins in 2015 and said this was the book she had been waiting "all [her] life" to publish. 

The book blends Mayer’s insights from her years as a journalist, latterly as editor-at-large for TIME magazine, with "illuminating" and "sometimes hilarious" accounts of the process of forming the Women’s Equality Party, with deep research into the global reality of gender inequality.

Attack of the Fifty Foot Women tackles questions fundamental to everyone affected by the global imbalance between the sexes, by drawing together studies and interviews with experts and leaders in many fields and people in their public and domestic lives. Mayer peppers the book with "fascinating anecdotes" and "startling revelations" while surveying cultures and countries from Iceland to Saudi Arabia, China to Hollywood.

According to the publisher, Attack of the Fifty Foot Women doesn’t just set out with "clarity and unprecedented detail" the mechanisms holding women back and how much women contribute despite these hindrances to every area of life, Mayer also takes readers with her on a journey to a truly gender balanced society—a place that she calls 'Equalia'—and shows readers how to get there.

Mayer said: “You may have noticed a popular refrain in public life at the moment: ‘Men have made a mess. We need women of stature to clear it up’. This book tests that proposition and asks what else the power of women, unleashed, might achieve. A lot of research points to the economic benefits of increasing female participation but what else would change? Are Equalians happier? What’s going on in Equalian homes and workplaces? Who’s looking after the children? Does the air smell cleaner? What’s on TV? It wasn’t until I started advocating for gender equality on doorsteps and at meetings of the Women’s Equality Party that I realised everyone struggles to imagine a gender equal society, because nowhere on the planet does such a society exist. My book works to plug that gap.”

Milton said: "This is the book I’ve been waiting all my life to publish. At the outset I said I wanted HQ to be bold, brave, feminist and empowering. This ticks all of those boxes, and crucially will help create understanding for how we can achieve empowerment and equality. You won’t be able to put this book down until you’ve finished it and once you’ve finished it, you won’t be able to stop changing the world."

The book will be published in hardback, e-book and audio download on 8th March 2017, International Women's Day.