Because of Her Sex: The Myth of Equality for Women in Britain
(In this controversial book, the author examines the major...)
In this controversial book, the author examines the major issues of women's lives today coming to the alarming conclusion that organized discrimination against women has worsened in recent years rather than improved, particularly at work. In spite of years of legislation and equal opportunity policies, equality and access to independence remain elusive. Such strategies have been bolted to an existing structure where the very fabric of society still refuses to accommodate a woman because of her sex.
Life after Birth: What Even Your Friends Won’t Tell You about Motherhood
(New motherhood changes everything. Few women are prepared...)
New motherhood changes everything. Few women are prepared for the radical shifts in identity, emotional intensity and relations with friends, family and the father of their child. In this fully revised and updated edition of the classic book that first bust the conspiracy of silence surrounding the upheaval of new motherhood, Kate Figes draws on medical and historical research, the invention of good motherhood as well as personal testimony to reassure new mothers everywhere that they are not only normal if they find things difficult, but also doing fine.
The Terrible Teens: What Every Parent Needs to Know
(Living with teenagers can be more stressful and emotional...)
Living with teenagers can be more stressful and emotional than anything parents have previously experienced. While there are dozens of books on development in young children, books on adolescent development and how to cope are almost non-existent. Kate Figes redresses the balance. Based on the advice of experts and interviews with parents and their children, this informed and practical analysis of the difficulties young people face growing up today will be essential reading for any parent.
(In this unique and entertaining book, Kate Figes explores...)
In this unique and entertaining book, Kate Figes explores girl talk, the way bitching erupts amongst teenage girls, the tenacity of female stereotypes as well as essential guidance on being the best kind of a bitch strong and self-assured rather than the bitch that needs to put other women down to feel stronger. Packed with witty anecdote, etiquette, interviews, and contributions from strong bitches such as Kathy Lette, Wendy Holden, and Virginia Ironside this is a must-read for all women on the most delicious, yet dangerous of verbal art forms.
Our Cheating Hearts: Love and Loyalty, Lust and Lies
(Many people manage to be monogamous, yet also think of ad...)
Many people manage to be monogamous, yet also think of adultery as the crime they could imagine themselves committing. But does being "faithful" mean the same to everyone? Why do people have affairs? Using real-life testimony from those who have "cheated" and those who have been cheated on, alongside the most up-to-date research, this book looks at the big questions around love and commitment.
(Coming up to her sixtieth birthday, Kate Figes found hers...)
Coming up to her sixtieth birthday, Kate Figes found herself turning to the larger questions of family, love and life's meaning. It is like this author to examine different stages in writing, and her books - from new motherhood and adolescence to coupledom and infidelity testify to this way of understanding herself and others, so naturally, she turned to write to explore the challenges of becoming sixty. And then a horrible, and sudden diagnosis of breast cancer which had metastasized.
Kate Figes was a British feminist author and journalist who took as her subjects the love lives of other people, sexism and motherhood. She is the author of Because of Her Sex: The Myth of Equality for Women in Britain, and Life after Birth: What Even Your Friends Won’t Tell You About Motherhood, that was written with Jean Zimmerman.
Background
Kate Figes was born as Catherine-Jane Figes on the 6th of November, 1957 in London, United Kingdom, the daughter of a writer, Eva Figes and John George Figes. Her father, whom Kate characterized as absent and unreliable, ran an employment agency. Her parents’ marriage ended in a bitter divorce when she was 5.
Figes’s relationship with her mother was complex and difficult. Though she was close to her younger brother, Orlando, theirs was chaotic and insecure. She left home for good at 17 after had a blazing row with her mother.
Education
Kate Figes attended Camden School For Girls. Soon after that, she entered the Polytechnic of Central London (University of Westminster-Law school), where she studied Arabic and Russian.
Kate published the first of seven non-fiction books, Because of Her Sex: The Myth of Equality for Women in Britain шт 1994. A part-time job as a fiction editor for Cosmopolitan led to commissions to write for newspapers, and in 1996 she became books editor for the Mail on Sunday’s You magazine, a position she held until her death.
Figes also wrote What About Me? in 2004 and What About Me, Too? in 2006, that were light relief from the heavy lifting of her non-fiction mouthy comic novels, written in emails, which reprised her recurring preoccupation with mother-daughter relationships. Her difficult relationship with her own mother came up in The Big Fat Bitch Book for Girls that was written in 2007. In Couples, that came out in 2010 she brought the same formula to long-term relationships, and three years later she moved on to infidelity, with Our Cheating Hearts – Love and Loyalty, Lust and Lies. Her final book, On Smaller Dogs and Larger Life Questions, was published in 2018.
Kate Figes is particularly known as a prolific feminist author of books, who explored life after childbirth, marriage, infidelity and other topics, and recalled a difficult relationship with her mother.
Ms. Figes’s most successful book, a best-seller in the United Kingdom that enabled her to break into the American market, was Life After Birth, where she explored the extreme shifts in identity that women undergo after childbirth as well as topics like sexual desire, sleeplessness and maternal ambivalence, a virtually taboo subject at the time and one that elicited hate mail.
Figes contended that a mother’s unconditional love for her child does not necessarily come at birth, it grows as the physical shock fades and may well be preceded by unhappiness, confusion, and disillusionment. Admitting to this does not make you a bad mother, she insisted. She was also critical of natural childbirth, viewing the injuries some women in labor sustain as unnecessary.
Quotations:
"I don’t believe that any of us can ever accept the inevitability of our own death. Life is too bloody wonderful."
"Facing death has taught me how to live".
"In retrospect, motherhood is the best thing that ever happened to me".
"It’s not easy to believe you can when your own mother is one too".
"The literature seemed to hurdle over the mother as if she didn’t exist or wasn’t crucial to bringing up a happy, healthy child".
"By coming that much closer to dying I have learned a little more about how to live well".
"I know that a good girl is supposed to be kind, enabling of others, nice - not expressing all those natural human emotions of anger and selfishness. But in tennis, there is a freedom within the white lines of the court to be me - sweaty and sunburnt, exuberantly lost in all the joy of play, competitive and crafty".
Personality
Physical Characteristics:
Kate Figes was diagnosed with stage IV triple-negative breast cancer in September 2016. It is the most aggressive and difficult breast cancer to treat. She and her family have been living from scan to scan since 2016. In the year's breast cancer ultimately spread to her bones. She died from it at the age of 62.
Quotes from others about the person
"She was extraordinarily honest, brave, funny and intent on making a difference through understanding the relationships of our lives. She was very much part of the feminist community". - editor and publisher, Lennie Goodings.
Interests
walking, cooking, eating, listening to music and going to the theatre and staring out to sea from a beach hut on the south coast
Sport & Clubs
Tennis
Connections
Kate Figes was married to Christopher Wyld. They had two daughters, Eleanor and Grace.
Father:
John George Figes
Mother:
Eva Figes
Eva (Unger) Figes was born on the 15th of April, 1932 in Berlin, Germany and died on the 28th of August, 2012 in London. She was a British novelist, social critic, and translator who reacted against traditional realist literature by inventing new forms for her own works. Figes wrote several books of criticism, including Patriarchal Attitudes: Women in Society in 1970 and Sex and Subterfuge: Women Novelists to 1850 in 1982, an autobiography, Little Eden in 1978, which examines her father’s imprisonment at the Dachau concentration camp and the family’s subsequent escape to England, and the memoirs Tales of Innocence and Experience in 2003 and Journey to Nowhere in 2008.
husband:
Christopher Wyld
Christopher Wyld spent nineteen years at the BBC, joining Radio News as a subeditor in 1978. He left in 1995 having spent seven years as a foreign editor in BBC Newsgathering. He subsequently worked as head of communications for Business in the Community and as chief executive of Children’s Express, a charity whose aim was to give young people the power and means to express themselves publicly on issues that affected them. He also worked as a primary school teacher in the London Borough of Hackney. Christopher was appointed director of the Foreign Press Association in 2008.
Eleanor Wyld was born on the 30th of November, 1989 in Brighton, United Kingdom. She is an actress, known for OXV: The Manual, Johnny English Reborn and Misfits.
Daughter:
Grace Wyld
Grace Wyld has been a researcher at New Philanthropy Capital (NPC), where she supported all areas of the research and consulting team, supporting charities to measure their impact and develop theories of change. She works on NPC’s Data Labs project, helping to establish data labs in health, education, and employment and supporting the running of the Justice Data Lab. From 2019, she is a Policy and Research Manager at the Sheila McKechnie Foundation.
