In 1985, a bunch of female artists, incensed by an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art that included 165 artists but only 17 women, founded the Guerrilla Girls. Dubbing ourselves “The Conscience of the Artworld,” we started making posters that bluntly stated the facts of discrimination and used humor to convey information, provoke discussion and to show that feminists can be funny. We assumed the names of dead women artists, and began wearing gorilla masks when we appeared in public, concealing our true identities and focusing on the issues rather than on our personalities.
Guerrilla Girls, Inc., www.guerrillagirls.com, was established by two founding Guerrilla Girls and other members to continue the use of provocative text, visuals and humor in the service of feminism and social change. They have written several books and create projects about the art world, film, politics and pop culture. They travel the world, talking about the issues and their experiences as feminist masked avengers, reinventing the “f” word into the 21st century.

While doing research as a medical student at Yale and then as a resident and faculty member at Harvard, Louann Brizendine discovered that almost all of the clinical data in existence on neurology, psychology, and neurobiology focused exclusively on males. In response to this, Brizendine established the first clinic in the country to study and treat women’s brains. At the same time, the National Institute of Health began to regularly include female subjects in its studies for the first time. The combined result has been an explosion of new data on the female brain.

In The Female Brain, due out in August 2006, Dr. Brizendine answers questions like why are women more verbal than men? Why do women remember details of fights that men cannot? Why do women tend to form deeper bonds with their female friends than men do with their male counterparts? Exploring these questions and many others that have stumped the sexes throughout the ages, this revolutionary book combines two decades of Brizendine’s own work, real life stories from her clinical practice, and all of the latest information from the scientific community at large to provide a truly comprehensive look at the way women’s minds work.

LOUANN BRIZENDINE, M.D. is a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCSF. She is founder and director of the Women’s Mood and Hormone Clinic, and lives in San Francisco. Here is a look at the table of contents

Chapter 1 Birth of the Female Brain
Chapter 2 Teen Girl Brain
Chapter 3 Love and Trust
Chapter 4 Sex
Chapter 5 Mommy Brain
Chapter 6 Emotions
Chapter 7 Mature Female Brain
Epilogue: The Future of the Female Brain
Appendix: The Female Brain and Hormone Therapy
Appendix: The Female Brain and Postpartum Depression