SOCIETY: ANTHEA McTEIRNANreviews Reclaiming the F Word: The New Feminist MovementBy Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune Zed Books, 269pp. £12.99

UNLIKE DYLAN THOMAS, we shall begin at the end, for what’s not to like about a book that gives the final word to a woman who is one of the most inspirational activists on the planet, Loretta Ross, founder of the SisterSong Women of Colour Reproductive Health Collective in the United States?

“The thing that I love about the women’s movement,” says Ross, “is that no one can claim that we belong to the same organisation. We don’t all agree . . . The only thing I think feminists have in common is a commitment to end the oppression of women. Beyond that we are as diverse as they come. And yet I don’t think anybody would hesitate to call us a movement because we are women with a lot of different ideas moving in the same direction. That to me is a movement.”

Reclaiming the F Word: The New Feminist Movement, by Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune, has a couple of hard acts to follow. The third in a trilogy of books focusing on the lot of women today, and marking the fact that it is 40 years since the women's movement gathered its forces and unleashed a second wave of feminism, Redfern and Aune needed to bring something else to the party. They have.

Natasha Walter's recent Living Dollsconcentrated on the tyranny of body image but drew criticism from some quarters for its lack of solutions. Kat Banyard's The Equality Illusionis chock-full of voices of women who are suffering the real effects of sexism, from sex workers to women with eating disorders to sexually harassed schoolgirls, and draws inspiration for its analysis from their stories. Redfern and Aune have arrived with their arms full of ideas, encouragement and action for human beings who think that it would be a blooming good idea if everyone was treated equally regardless of their gender.

Marx would have called it praxis. Norman Tebbit might have made reference to bicycles. Redfern and Aune have reams of examples of what others have done, what others are doing and what you can do to challenge and defeat sexist discrimination.

Reclaiming the F Wordmay focus on women in Britain, but many of the issues facing women over the water are the same as those bombarding us. You might argue that, without control over our own bodies, the cross women in Ireland bear is, in fact, even heavier.

Yet the book pays more than lip service to actions women are taking across the world. Our own brilliantly innovative Rag (Revolutionary Anarchafeminist Group, ragdublin.blogspot.com) and Lashback (myspace.com/lashbackdublin) get an honourable mention for their feminist magazines. An anarchafeminist called Siobhán gets a bualadh bos for being part of a group that copied and decorated more than 100 CDs by female artists, then handed them out in Dublin’s Temple Bar.

“Hey up,” read the handmade CD insert, “you have been given this CD because you’re a girl. Cool wha? The idea behind giving you this CD is that you, as one of many teenage girls kicking around town of a Saturday, will be so amazingly inspired by this CD that you’ll stop kicking around the town watching the boys go off starting their bands and you’ll either go and join them, or better still go and, like all the girls on this CD did, start something of your own.”

Of course that band could be the new Slits, it could be Ireland’s Pussycat Dolls. As Loretta Ross says, our beauty is in our diversity. Fingers crossed.

Using the demands of the 1970s women’s- liberation movement as a benchmark, Redfern and Aune tackle the thorny issues of body image, sexual freedom, violence against women and equality in the home and the workplace to check how far we’ve come.

Surprise, surprise: not far enough.

After the depressing spectacle of a bunch of public schoolboys punching it out in a UK general election that produced a grand total of 22 per cent women MPs, and with a recent headcount of our own Dáil reminding us that only 13 per cent of TDs are women, Redfern and Aune’s contribution on women’s political involvement provides a robust and important contribution to this rejuvenated feminist debate.

“It is very difficult for a woman to make up her mind to enter politics. Once she does then she has to prepare her husband, and her children, and her family. Once she has overcome all the obstacles and applies . . . then the male aspirants against whom she is applying make up all sort of stories about her, and after all this, when her name goes to the party bosses, they do not select her name because they fear losing that seat.” So said Sushma Swaraj, an MP in India. It is a speech that could easily be replicated by any aspiring woman politician in this state. And, yes, things are even worse in India than they are here, with 10.7 per cent of the parliament made up of women.

But a differential of 2.3 percentage points is nothing to crow about, especially when the use of much-derided quotas has delivered a lower house in Rwanda made up of 56.3 per cent women. The quota genie has slipped out of the bottle, and it may now be time to reclaim the Q-word. Equal representation is a fundamental aspect of any democracy and a basic human right. Ask the Rwandans.

Meanwhile, Reclaiming the F Wordhas a practical list of suggestions for actions you can take to change the things that stop half the world being all they can be, lists of books you might want to read, groups you can join (or set up) and a warm sisterly tone of congratulation to everyone who has ever challenged even the tiniest belittlement of women. "Feminists, if you are downhearted, we hope we've changed your mind. You are not alone," write Redfern and Aune in this must-have DIY guide to feminist action.

To end at the beginning, however, with Loretta Ross: “We are women with a lot of different ideas moving in the same direction.” To move with them is a privilege.

Anthea McTeirnanis an Irish Times journalist. She will chair a talk and discussion between Natasha Walter, author of Living Dolls, and Susan McKay, chair of the National Women's Council, at Project Arts Centre in Dublin on Saturday, June 5th, at 4pm as part of Dublin Writers' Festival. Admission €10/€8 concessions. dublinwritersfestival.com