From the US workplace to the international arena, the Bush administration has wrapped female-friendly rhetoric around some of the most hard-core policy since Ronald Regan. The bombing campaign in Afganistan was cast as liberation for Afghan women,and a push to roll back reproductive rights was characterized as "protection" for women and foetuses at home. We are now confronted with the strange spectacle of a near fundamentalist presidency - after decades of feminist struggle. There are more women in office now than during any other US administration. "Bushwomen" is a tale of a cynical species. The author Laura Flanders investigates how they rose to high office and where their real loyalties lie.
There are savage portraits of all the women, including the real story behind Secretary of the Interior Gale Ann Norton - dubbed "The Woman from Marlboro Country" by her environmentalist foes; Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, who bullied union longhsore workers to the benefit of her trading-with China family and friends; Condoleezza Rice and her passion for oil and football; Lynne Cheney's lesbian novel and suppression of her activist daughter; and how Karen Hughes got her first job thanks to NOW - all revealing the cynicism of the Right's crusade to win moderate women voters and put a female face on anti-feminist policy.