Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
The Shrinking Goddess : Power, Myth and the Female Body - Mineke Schipper

The Shrinking Goddess

Power, Myth and the Female Body

By: Mineke Schipper

Paperback | 20 May 2026

At a Glance

Paperback


RRP $27.99

$26.99

or 4 interest-free payments of $6.75 with

Available: 20th May 2026

Preorder. Will ship when available.

Wild and strange stories have circulated about the female body since antiquity. While legends of poisoned hymens and fanged vaginas circulated, the first female figure Mother Earth was recreated as a crooked rib. Ranging from the absurd to the empowering, these myths not only survive but continue to wield power today.

The Shrinking Goddess brings together myths about the female form and traces the subsequent male efforts to 'tame' it. Mineke Schipper examines how women's bodies have been represented since records began the first Venus and vulva figures date to 40,000 BCE and around the world.

Drawing together the vast reservoir of myths, proverbs, art, science and scripture that shape how women are seen in the present day, Schipper reclaims the female body as a source of power.

Readers of Angela Davis, Mary Beard, Audre Lorde, Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer will want to read this book.

'Mineke Schipper provides a fascinating and wide-ranging compendium of fact and fiction through the ages.' J. M. Coetzee

'Fascinatingly researched, clearly written and wonderfully illustrated, The Shrinking Goddess takes back the story of the female body and sexuality from patriarchal mythmakers, fearmongerers, and misogynists, both ancient and modern. Doing so, Mineke Schipper opens the way for a dialogue among people of all genders and sexualities seeking to topple the usual hierarchies and find another way, another world.' Jane Caputi

'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.' New Statesman

More in Social & Cultural History

Jane Austen at Home : A Biography - Lucy Worsley

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Threads of Life : History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle - Clare Hunter
Shadows of the Workhouse : The Drama of Life in Postwar London - Jennifer Worth
The Golden Thread : How Fabric Changed History - Kassia St. Clair

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective - Sara Lodge
100 Diaries That Chronicled World Events - Colin Salter

RRP $44.99

$35.75

21%
OFF
Our Moon : A Human History - Rebecca Boyle

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
Soft : A Brief History of Sentimentality - Ferdinand Mount
The Voynich Manuscript - Raymond Clemens

RRP $82.95

$60.75

27%
OFF
Dark Emu : Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture - Bruce Pascoe
Abandoned Women : Scottish Convicts Exiled Beyond the Seas - Lucy Frost
Entitled : The Rise and Fall of the House of York - Andrew Lownie

RRP $37.99

$28.75

24%
OFF
The Finest Hotel in Kabul : A People's History of Afghanistan - Lyse Doucet
How to Move a Zoo : The incredible true story - Kate Simpson

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
Night : Penguin Modern Classics - Elie Wiesel

RRP $26.99

$20.75

23%
OFF
The Secret Lives of Colour - Kassia St Clair

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF