sheila white
This book had a tremendous impact on me, and certainly helped to shape the person I have become. I first read it in my teens and am in my 40's now and read it again recently. I was amazed by the feelings it still conjured up in me. I think it has dated, and so disagree with a lot of the comments of others, maybe I am lucky but most of the men i come accross have progressed from those portrayed. But it was a real watershed book for me. It definitely affected a lot of my life choices since reading it.

Frances Townsend
When I look back I realise that this book had a profound affect on all areas of my life. I still remember reading it in my early twenties and the ideas were so radical to me that I felt awoken. I learned to value my female friends, to question the traditional role of women, to expect things for myself.

Eileen
I read this book in 1979, the summer before I started graduate school. It seems to me the book is all about loneliness, whether as a wife, or an academic. It was very depressing to realize that the community and pleasure of graduate student life would end with the same loneliness of a loveless marriage that the life of an academic was supposed to erase.

louisa white
in response to john phillips, i don't think it is a man-hating book - it's a book that names and hates the structures of patriarchy, an importantant distinction. Mira is 'socially inept' because the constraints of society make her that way; in a patriarchal world, women can never quite fit and will always be at odds. I don't understand 'negative feminism' - the Women's Room for me named the multiple constraints and narrow expectations in women's lives, and helped me understand the challenges i would face as i tried to grow into a happier and fulfilled life. Challenging the constraints and changing the external limits imposed IS a happier, more fulfilled life. Putting shape to fear and confusion helped me move through and hopefully towards being beyond them. The Women's Room ends without happiness but with a sense of hope - the most honest thing we can offer ourselves and our daughters. I could see myself in all the women in the book, as i was and as i hoped to be, and it is still a book i go back to for both comfort and inspiration.

Sara Spencer
Read first in my twenties, The Womans Room was the first book which seemed to be describing my mothers life - her aspirations, her frustrations and the root of her rage. Now in my forties, it speaks to me of my own experience - the joy of close friendships between women, the search for sense of self and the having or not having of children. Inspiring, relevant and a constant companion.

maureen rasmussen
The dawn of realisation of what it means to be awoman. Some years ago now.

Fran Osborne
I read this when at University and agree that although not the greatest work of fiction, it had significant impact. The aspect which I know significantly changed my life and still makes me shudder relates to the treatment received in hospital by women giving birth. I went on to have all my children at home because I couldn't bear the idea of being interfered with in such an awful way. I still can not understand why this situation is becoming increasingly more difficult for women and why we put up with it. I agree that in many ways things haven't changed for women and this is such a depressing thought. I've also just read the Bookseller of Kabul and found the lives of women described in it so utterly without hope that surely we need a huge surge of interest for the rights of women again. Why do we put up with it ?

Katrina Kemp
I am young enough to have grown up thinking that marriage is a choice rather than a necessity (I am 22). However, the characters in this book made me feel more sure of myself and my feminist sentiments. It made me realise that I should challenge and stand up for female rights rather than accept that occasional sexism that comes my way. A beautiful book.

Gill Musson
I read this book in what seems like another life - I can't recall it in detail but I can remember the scales falling from my eyes - only a little, but enough for me to start questioning the status quo for me as a young wife and mother at the time - and I've never stopped since!

Mara Bryan
This book was filled with revelation for me. I had previously thought that misunderstandings with and about men were all MY fault, or the fault of women as individuals, but when French described such experiences as common to many women, I realised what the feminist struggle was about. It altered my perception of the dynamic between the sexes and filled me with determination not to be a victim of lack of confidence.

Hilary Williams
I can't really remember the book, but I can remember feeling how right it was and how it related to me and what I needed to do with my life. I'll have to reread it now.

Gillian Phillips
I was in my first professional job,living as a 'bachelor girl'.It told me that it was OK to be in control of my life;not dependent on parents or men-just the support of women friends.

ann moktar
This book, whilst not the best work of literature, is the book that most clearly shaped the woman I have become. It is the book that made me question my acceptance of certain things as normal and pushed me to travel and experience a life other than the one my mother had lived.

Rosie Elliott
A difficult choice, but this book gets my vote because I read it at a time when I was realising that the direction of my life would be determined by the choices I made, and that I could make strong focussed choices and not just float along in the wake of others. The Women's Room helped me enormously.

Gaenor
I read it when it first came out. I was 27, and in a very difficult relationship with two young children. I left my marriage, got a degree, joined a women's political singing group! Not just due to the book, but it certainly made an impact when I was stuck and very unhappy.

Patricia Evans
I read this book in 1978 and its still in my bedside cabinate!

Sue
The book that changed my life. It reflected my life at the time as if through a prism. My husband was certainly not like the awful Norm, but the boredom and guilt that I felt because I was so often irritated by my small children was reflected on the pages in front of me - I read the book in two nights, staying up until 3 in the morning to do so. When I asked my husband to read it, he couldn't get past page 20 'because it's so boring' - and I heard myself scream, 'Yes, and it's my life!' - the beginning of the end for us, but the beginning of a new awakening to Feminism for me.

Pamela Beaupre
Born in the early fifties I saw my future as a home maker and mother only. After reading this book I realised that there was more to life - the idea of a rota of room cleaning scared me stiff. I decided it would never happen to me and although happily married with a family it has always been on my terms. I am about to suggest my daughter(16) should now read it.

Jean Davies
I identified so strongly with Mira at the time and with the comments of Ann Monica above. It made a deep impression on me.It's hard to remember how revolutionary it seemed to be then.

Saf. Bruce-Quay
This book affirmed and encouraged my belief in my self in that I could, given the talent,courage and determination, do and be anything or anyone I wanted. The world of women need to read this book and realise they really could use their inate power to change everything !!

Christine Darley
My husband said that this book changed my personality. He noticed that I stopped doing the washing up and ironing automatically! It made me rethink my role inlife. I went on to train as a nurse in my forties and have a responsible and satisfying career now.

Rachael Jones
I was about 14 in the early eighties when I read this book and I was observant enough to see that things hadn't changed much 30 years on. As a woman with lately -diagnosed endometriosis , I can vouch that this book's wry observations about the quality of the medical service received by women is still a big problem and should be a priority issue with today's women. I'm so glad this book made it to the shortlist since I nominated for it originally and I'm glad to nominate it again. If some male respondants are going to leave ungenerous views, please don't bother, just go away and play with yourself.

Amina Marix Evans
I bought this book because of all the hype surrounding it, but never got further than about page 30 because the paperback edition had an average of 5 printing errors on each page. As a compulsive proof-reader I found it unreadable.

Nicky Tate
Gripping, sad, stark and funny. Colourful characters, unflinching description. I read this aged 15 and thought it was a work of fiction. With every subsequent year I began to realise that its not, and that some things haven't changed so much for women since the 1950s. I'm always re-reading this book to rediscover how Mira made sense of the world.

John Phillips
I read the novel back in the mid-eighties and agin in the early ninties. In my opinion it is the ultimate man-hating, bigoted, 'negative feminist' novel. All the ills of the world are placed firmly at the feet of the men in the novel, rather than acknowledging that the main charecter is socially inept. 'Negative feminism' doesn't lead to a happier fulfilled life and you don't have to hate men to believe in feminism or female rights.

kathrin collins
This novel made me realise that I wasn't 'unnatural' to resent the constrictions and constraints of society on women in the sixties and seventies. Also that I wasn't alone. reading it was the beginning of life-changes for me.

Hilary Ackland
This novel did really change my life. After reading it I nurtured the idea of taking control of my life by going back to university as a graduate student! I finished up with a Ph.D and living the life of an academic with my two children.

Jenny Haynes
Although a child of the sixties, this was the first book I read that made me aware of just how women were (are?) treated by men/society as inferior. I had just been through a messy divorce and it gave me confidence to be on my own.

Jane Valentine
My mother bought it for me in 1978 when I was 19. I had never read anything like it before. I still go back to it when I need to remember how it was. I didn't learn my lesson from it though!

Ann Monica
I was a new wife and mother in the seventies and I didn't like the domesticity. I felt trapped. I remember that this novel went against the grain of what I 'thought' was expected of women at that time. It blew the sixties Stepford Wife illusion right out from under my feet. At the time my ex-husband complained to a friend that I had started answering him back!

Ceri White
It's the novel that as a spotty teenager opened my eyes to the reality of women's lives and the choices only women have to make. Provoking and lifechanging. I've been angry ever since!

Stephanie Royston
It gave me strength to carry on after I was left with a toddler at the age of 19 with no qualifications. I read it when it first came out and it opened my eyes to the fact that I could be in control of my life.