I had no expectations but wow. I don't even have the words to describe how this reading experience. But I can say what reading Female Fear Factory has made me feel, fucking empowered!

This book explores the spaces in which fear is instilled in women around the world, from lecture halls to buses, and how it is this fear which is used to help the patriarchy to survive.

I really enjoyed some of the chapters and found them really interesting and insightful - particularly chapters 4 and 6 and the section discussing the coercive professors. Chapter 3 - the false promise of safety - was so interesting, exploring how women are told to stick with men they know but this may not always mean they are safe, even if they do. But a lot of the other chapters I found very hard to read and to get into, including chapters 1, 5 and 9.

I was hoping this book would be a bit easier and more accessible to grip onto. I am looking for books to recommend to students that cover the way women are viewed in society and how fear is used as a tactic to control women in today's society. I did enjoy reading about the way fear finds itself in all areas of the world and how affects us throughout the years and in all aspects of life, but I felt this read more like a textbook. I would possibly recommend this as something to add to a course, but not as a read to get into the subject. This book felt a bit deeper than that, but was absolutely an interesting read.

Fear as a means of control, conscious or otherwise, is something which features in the lives of most women across many cultures. This thoughtful book explores this, including the perspective of how such fear comes to be, how it manifests itself in behaviour and public policy and how women are ultimately affected over generations. Very interesting indeed.