Why Women Fail

Something dreadful is happening to women.

Not directly to all women but to a sufficient number to affect nearly all women and indeed society as a whole.

This dreadful thing — for it is to be dreaded — is self-destructiveness, that strange process by which humans sometimes damage or destroy themselves in body, mind or spirit.

So writes Dr Ann Dally — doctor, psychiatrist and author.

In The Morbid Streak she showed how self-destructiveness distorts our lives and poisons our relationships.

Here, she painfully and compassionately explores a paradox.

Women are beginning to throw off the bonds of the last centuries, but as they emerge, the very freedoms and open choices they achieve thrust them brutally into underachievement, tranquillizer-addiction, neurosis, breakdown and even suicide.

And in our modern society, self-destruction in these forms equals failure.

So women’s personalities and the pressures of the new society conspire to cheat women of their ambitions, their self-esteem and their emotions.

Why Women Fail is a fascinating study that does not only analyse the tragedy of women's constriction in society, but also shows how we can all work to restructure the values of society and enable women to achieve self-fulfilment.

Praise for Ann Dally

'Thorough and engaging' - Kirkus Reviews

'introduces a levelheaded view' - Kirkus Reviews

'refreshingly evenhanded' - Kirkus Reviews

Dr Ann Dally (1929-2007) was a pioneering English author and psychiatrist. She was born in London, the daughter of a distinguished lawyer and a half-American mother. She studied history, before qualifying in medicine and then in psychiatry, whilst going on to marry and have six children. Ann Dally wrote eleven books in all, including Women Under the Knife , about the history of gynaecological surgery, A-Z of Babies, The Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Medicine, A Child is Born, Mothers: Their Power and Influence and The Morbid Streak .