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Alison Wolf

The XX Factor: How Working Women are Creating a New Society Paperback – 25 April 2013

by Professor Alison Wolf (Author)

4.1 49 ratings

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For most of history, being female defined the limits of a woman's achievements. But now, women are successful careerists equal to men. In Norway, women legally must constitute a third of all boards; in America, women have gone from 3% of practising lawyers in 1970 to 40% today, and over half of all law students. These changes are revolutionary - but not universal: the 'sisterhood' of working women is deeply divided. Making enormous strides in the workplace are young, educated, full-time professionals who have put children on hold. But for a second group of women this is unattainable: instead, they work part-time, earn less, are concentrated in heavily feminised occupations like cleaning and gain income and self-worth from having children young. As these two groups move ever further apart, shared gender no longer automatically creates interests in common with other women.The XX Factor lifts the curtain on these social, cultural and economic schisms.

Print length

464 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Profile Books
Publication date

25 April 2013
Dimensions

15.3 x 3.1 x 23.4 cm
ISBN-10

184668403X
ISBN-13

978-1846684036
See all details

Sheryl Sandberg
16,326
Paperback
54 offers from £0.01

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Review

'Wolf has written an exhaustive, intelligent, thoughtful and at times provocative and idiosyncratic analysis of what it is to be an elite woman. By laying out the choices that women are faced with and the consequences of their actions, Wolf is ensuring that we do not have to walk blindfold into the future' The Financial Times

'A crucial bible for anyone wanting to check up on anything about contemporary woman' Guardian

'Full of such factual richness... The XX Factor is a feast of data' The Sunday Times

'Powerful, brilliantly argued, provocative and original an outstanding book from a compelling thinker' Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist and Adapt

'Just when you thought you never wanted to read another word on working woman, here comes Alison Wolf sweeping away the sloppy prejudices and dreary whining, presenting us with some bracing facts. The XX Factor is an exhilarating piece of analysis that explains once and for all why educated women have done so well (though there will never gender equality in the boardroom), and why they have become a class apart to the other four fifths. Cheering and sobering by turns, it puts to shame other books that have been written on this subject' Lucy Kellaway, Financial Times columnist

'Alison Wolf has made a brilliant, lucid, and original contribution to the debate about women and the modern economy. If you care about women, work and families in the world today, you must read this passionate, fact-filled book' Chrystia Freeland, author of Plutocrats

'Alison Wolf s skill is to use facts where others have only opinions. The results will infuriate and stimulate almost every reader' --John Kay, author of Obliquity

'Powerful, brilliantly argued, provocative and original - an outstanding book from a compelling thinker.' Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist and Adapt'A thought-provoking read' --Cosmopolitan

'Powerful, brilliantly argued, provocative and original - an outstanding book from a compelling thinker.' --Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist and Adapt

'Highly readable and informative' Times Literary Supplement

'The book is fascinating and there is plenty of food for thought within it'
Management Today

'Engagingly written … has a light touch and is full of personal anecdotes, but it is also well footnoted, with a scholar's careful attention to sources' Times Higher Education Supplement

'An exhaustive, provocative analysis' London Business School, Financial Times Summer Reading

'With the XX Factor Wolf accomplishes a rare feat: she combines real breadth with real depth. No matter how much you think you know about this hotly debated subject, and whether or not you agree with every one of Wolf's ideas, you will come away from her book with new information - some merely amusing, but some foundation-shaking' --New York Times Book Review

'Highly readable and informative' Times Literary Supplement

'The book is fascinating and there is plenty of food for thought within it'
Management Today

'Engagingly written … has a light touch and is full of personal anecdotes, but it is also well footnoted, with a scholar's careful attention to sources' Times Higher Education Supplement

'An exhaustive, provocative analysis' --London Business School, Financial Times Summer Reading

Book Description

The reality of female professional success in today's world - a challenge to long-held assumptions about female achievement and sexual inequality.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Profile Books; Main edition (25 April 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 464 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 184668403X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1846684036
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.3 x 3.1 x 23.4 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 1,301,447 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 413 in Sociology of Work
- 9,106 in Anthropology & Sociology Biographies
- 11,339 in Women's Studies

Customer reviews:
4.1 49 ratings

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William Jordan

Interesting if overlong account of a changing world

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 May 2013

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Wolf has an interesting and well argued thesis: the world has changed and for the top quintile of the population men and women lead similar lives. They go to the sane schools do the same jobs, work the same amounts, mate with the people from the same background and invest heavily in a small number of children born relatively late in life. They are also rich enough to hire servants drawn from the other 80 per cent of the population - female servants.

This is backed up with some heavy duty research - there are a lot of notes here - and it is both persuasive and surprising. We think life is not like this, says Wolf - because we read about the super rich for whom life is different again for women: more children younger and a life of administering the family properties. In this area there seems to be some elision in Wolf's thinking. She talks a good deal about family dynasties in politics in India and Pakistan and so and in big business of all kinds including Playboy. This presumably is not top quintile material - but is super rich. And in the historical sections, we hear about charity work, but also about running houses of ill repute and so in. Here too a clearer sense of who did what and why would be welcome.

Nonetheless I would recommend it strongly - not least for its explanation of the scruffy dress of academics. Apparently there's no need for display through clothes when your publications can do the job for you...

4 people found this helpful

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A well referenced study on how it's all a bit more complicated than you might think

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 May 2013

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I heard Professor Wolf on Radio 4 recently to the effect that once various obvious factors are accounted for, inequality has been largely eliminated and that contrary to received wisdom, Scandinavia provides no shining example. Her views were not well received as I recall. And so I read this and I'm pleased that I did.

In so many ways it's a counterpart to The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes in that it carefully demonstrates that today, the real sources of inequality are class and opportunity rather than whether one is male or female. Apparently it's as true in other countries as it is in the UK.

She lucidly and elegantly evidences that if one is poor then one is beyond highly likely (~90%) to be working in a stereotypical occupation. For professional occupations, with the exception of engineering, there is no such tendency.

The book does raise other seemingly unintended consequences of choice and opportunity for the professional classes including that they're not reproducing in sufficient quantities.

Two chapter titles worth quoting for controversy value if nothing else:

Goodbye to all that: the fracturing of sisterhood
The return of the servant classes

Whether or not it accords to your world view it's a great read dealing with bigger issues than the need for more women on bank notes.

10 people found this helpful

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Miki

Women and education are powerful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 August 2013

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This book is a racy read about how education has benefitted some middle class women. It is too smug and self congratulatory and not critical of inequality

5 people found this helpful

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Julie Clare

I bought this book because I had read extracts from ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 September 2015

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I bought this book because I had read extracts from it in the papers. The whole book is a bit too academic for my liking so I gave it away.

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Mary Morrison

Book club - different type of book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 July 2013

I heard the interview on the radio and read some of the articles about this book. I thought that it would be a different type of book to suggest to our book club (all female) as it opens up lots of ideas for discussion about the changes in life for educated women. It certainly worked and got lots of discussion going!

One person found this helpful

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David Wineberg

Elite Women Doing Very Well, Thanks

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 October 2013

The XX Factor seems an endless stream of self congratulation that women are succeeding in all domains, in all realms and in all places. Women at the top everywhere, and Wolf knows many personally; it's her world. She provides voluminous stats to demonstrate and back her assertions. But it reads like a defensive, rah-rah, yay for our side sort of narration.

The good news is that women today simply assume they are equal. They don't have to fight (much) any more. So they don't fight, but they also don't show preference for other women, and they don't engage in feminist battles (which is not necessarily a good thing, Wolf hints). They are as career and money oriented as men.

But Wolf is almost totally focused on the elite. While women here are taking over committees and boards and divisions and companies, girls are shot in Pakistan for trying to go to school, and wives in Afghanistan are expected to stay home - to never leave the house - for the rest of their lives. Every culture's restrictions crimp someone's style. Today's restrictions are different, but they're there. Wolf points some of them out (e.g. Japanese mothers can't hire foreign nannies) but doesn't analyze their impact enough. In fact, most of the evidence seems to be anecdotal, from friends and interviews.

One of Wolf's more important points is that poor and uneducated women find having children gives them an anchor and a purpose. Otherwise they feel they would end up on drugs or in jail, or both. She says elite career women find this hard if not impossible to believe, let alone relate to. That's how far we've come is the point.

Career women singlemindedly pursue their careers and make everything else fit that stricture. For the uneducated, there are mindnumbing minimum wage jobs, which are not sufficient reason to work. Those jobs will always be there - even after the children have grown. Seven dollars an hour doesn't have the same allure as $150 does. So more children earlier is not a burden in their minds.

No surprise - upper class women marry well, have fewer children and send them all to private schools. These women are trapped in their particular class structure, just as humans have always managed from the time the first chief formed the first harem. The upper classes are conservative; they have Rules, and members conform to fit in. At the macro level, nothing much has changed, except more players are now women. So it's not much the "new society" of the title, but a reshaping of the class structure, to allow women - if they follow the Rules.

The XX Factor is a deep snapshot of where feminism stands today. In 20 years, someone will write a followup, or maybe, it won't be necessary. Wouldn't that be nice.

David Wineberg

5 people found this helpful

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The XX Factor: How Working Women are Creating a New Society Paperback – 25 April 2013

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