Since the 1970s, when a new generation of feminist scholars established women's history as an academic discipline, the history of feminist movements has received much attention. Historians have focused chiefly on the leaders, programs, and internal politics of these movements. An important but often neglected part of this story, however, is the historical context in which feminists lived and worked. In most periods, any individual or group who protested against women's subordination or advocated gender equality confronted militant and organized resistance to any challenge to male privilege. Historians who criticize feminists for positions that seem too cautious or conservative often fail to take into account the hostility that confronted even reasonable and moderate demands.

Diane Guido, now a vice president for undergraduate programs at Azusa Pacific University, explores one chapter in the long history of antifeminism in this account of the German League for the Prevention of Women's Emancipation (Deutscher Bund zur Bekämpfung der Frauenemanzipation). Founded in 1912, the group took advantage of widespread anxiety about declining birthrates (considered a threat to military strength), sexual immorality, and the supposedly disruptive effects of married women's employment to enlist support for an all-out attack on feminism and women's claims to equality in politics, the workplace, and the family. This organization was small—at its height it recruited only about 1,000–2,000 members, including both men and women. At first glance, it might also seem to have been ineffective. Though the Anti-League (as it was often called) managed to annoy feminist organizations by forcing them to devote precious time and energy to defending themselves against misogynist propaganda, it could do little to halt the momentum that brought women the right to vote and the promise of other forms of equality in 1919.

Guido argues that the Anti-League's impact on public opinion was nonetheless greater than its insignificant numbers or unimpressive achievements would suggest. Largely because of its prolific output of pamphlets and articles, the group's message circulated widely. Among its supporters were men and women of high social status and considerable influence, particularly in conservative, Protestant circles. Teachers, a predominantly male group who had for many years resisted the feminization of their profession, made up a large percentage of members. Alliances with other conservative groups—especially with those that emphasized antisemitism—added to the Anti-League's visibility. Antifeminism as a political force did not disappear when the Anti-League dissolved in 1919, but contributed to a reinvigorated conservative movement that did much to create the political climate in which National Socialism could flourish.

Antifeminism, of course, was not confined to Germany. During the years before World War I, when support for feminism and woman suffrage reached its peak, oppositional groups formed in many western countries. This is a history that invites comparative perspectives. For example, if the Anti-League was typical of German antifeminism as a whole, then the contrast to its American counterparts is striking. The German movement seems to have been headed chiefly by intellectuals, and the commercial interests—such as the beer and liquor industries—that played such a prominent role in opposing woman suffrage in the United States appear to have had much less influence in Germany.

The author has used the available sources effectively to create a well-written and informative account of this organization. The subject of antifeminism, however, requires a broader analysis than this book provides. As background information on the era's gender relations, the author offers only an oversimplified account of femininity and feminism. She reduces Wilhelmine ideals of middle-class female behavior—a very complex subject—to the conventional “three K's” (“Kinder, Küche, Kirche”). She accepts the claim made by some early histories of German women's movements that “German bourgeois feminists adopted the predominant stereotype of femininity” (p. 10). If German feminists did not challenge the prevailing gender order, then why did antifeminists devote so much energy to opposing them?

Actually, as the author shows, the Anti-League paid much less attention to the minority of radical feminists than to the German Protestant Women's League, which was active in the conservative circles where the antifeminists found their support. Apparently, many Germans regarded even this very moderate form of feminism as a sinister threat to their way of life. This reaction, which exposed the insecurity that lay beneath the antifeminists' arrogant rhetoric, was not due to the character of any feminist movement, whether conservative, moderate, or radical. Rather, it arose from the speakers' fear that traditional ideals of masculinity could not withstand the pressures of modern society. The history of masculinities—a new historical field that the author does not mention—must provide a theoretical framework for our understanding of antifeminism as a national and international movement. The field of gender history, which until now has focused chiefly on women, should finally live up to its name by including both genders.