The Shrinking Goddess

From ancient myths to modern culture, The Shrinking Goddess explores how stories about women’s bodies – wild, sacred, and strange – have shaped our world. Mineke Schipper reclaims the female body as a source of power against centuries of attempts to control it.

‘A cultural and anthropological study of misogyny via global artworks, texts, myths and proverbs. Only by seeing what has been done can we undo it.’

‘Mineke Schipper draws on a lifetime’s study of stories and proverbs across the world to chart the ways in which ideas about women, creation and power have deployed over time. Fascinating … Schipper is on solid ground when she talks about the ancient world, equatorial Africa or China: the evidence she marshals is convincing and often remarkable.’

Mineke Schipper is a cultural historian and writer. She is the author of seven critically acclaimed works including Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet: Women in Proverbs from Around the World and Naked or Covered: A History of Dressing and Undressing Around the World. Her writing has been published in The Times, El Mundo and the Los Angeles Times, among others. Schipper was foreign secretary of Dutch PEN, chair of Index on Censorship Nederland and currently serves as Emeritus Professor of Intercultural Literary Studies at the University of Leiden, with visiting professorships in Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso and China. She received a Royal Order of Knighthood for her contribution to social and cultural studies. She lives in the Netherlands.