The Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings coincided with another important revelation about women's experiences in the 1990s. Susan C. Faludi '81's national bestseller Backlash was published.

What has been called the Year of the Woman, because of the higher numbers of women running for Congress, is nearing a close, but Faludi says she will continue to pursue her inquiry into the reasons feminism has come under severe attack in recent years. In fact, she opposes the very term, saying it suggests women's progress is only temporary.

Backlash, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, deals with what Faludi calls the anti-feminist backlash against gains feminists have made over the past decade and a half. The backlash is out of proportion to the small gains women have made, according to Faludi, who cites the Republican Convention and the attacks on Hillary Clinton as recent examples.

In a recent interview with The Crimson, Faludi did not have much new to add to Backlash's primary arguments, because, she says, the intensity of the backlash remains unchanged. She still cuts out clippings of the latest attacks on feminism, and notes with frustration the absence of women's issues at the forefront of national debate.

Faludi, currently a Knight Fellow at Stanford University, has started research for a second book which deals with the topic of masculinity. Faludi will aim the as yet untitled new book, which is due for publication in two and a half years, at finding the roots of the counterattack identified in Backlash.

Q: Was there any particular experience which led you to write Backlash?

A: It had a lot to do with a male shortage study which appeared in Newsweek. I saw a lot of women I knew who went to Harvard sort of browbeaten for having made this terrible choice of seeking a diploma. Right after the Newsweek story came out I was at a wedding and it was "Topic A" at the wedding for all the single women.

I was actually approached to write a book on a guide to single women, how single women can muddle through and avail themselves of whatever opportunities there are. There was to be a chapter on the cities you can move to where the sex ratio is in your favor.

Q: What was your goal in writing the book?

A: I wanted to look at the new and increasing pressures and hostility toward independent women, which I actually first defined as being aimed at single women. [But I] quickly realized that they are seen as emblematic for modern, liberated, independent women in general.

I wanted to wake up other women. All these troubles we've been told are in our head are either mythical or the result of attacks on our rights, not feminist gains. The goal was educational and political.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: A book on masculinity. Backlash was sort of aimed at showing [that] there was this reaction. I'm looking at the more psychological aspect of where this reaction comes from.

In the demand for equal treatment and dignity, we keep thinking of the denials in equality as a female problem. It's really a man problem, a man question, not a woman question.

Q: How do you think the book will be received?