The study takes as its starting point the fact that what used to be seen as outlandish has become commonplace in our society. The book offers an account of how feminist activists have worked to effect change in core institutions of American life. Katzenstein's fieldwork and interviews focus on the institutions of the United States military and the American Catholic Church. From 1988 to 1997 she interviewed about 120 individuals active in women-centered reform efforts within these two institutions. Her findings are compelling for many reasons. One is that the two institutions she studied represent the best test cases for her thesis. If change is occurring within the Catholic Church and the military because of feminist/womanist pressures (two of our stodgiest, thickly moss-backed, phallocentric institutions), then indeed the “sisterhood is powerful.” Different tributaries flow from a common feminist source and set in motion social changes.

She studies the feminists, mostly women, not in the public eye who throughout the last three decades (1960–1990s) have challenged in their everyday lives the institutions in which they work and live. The women engage in unobtrusive mobilization within these patriarchal edifices. These very same institutions, in turn, have a power of their own to shape differences in contemporary feminism. For example, military feminists have a strong belief in equal rights and equal opportunities. Their strategy is simply to have existing laws implemented within the military. The military women are liberal feminists, practicing interest-group feminism, whereas the Catholic feminists are more radical. They want to transform cultures, institutions, and society. They directly confront and contest poverty, homophobia, racism, war, and violence. The feminists within the Catholic Church in America are activists for radical equality. This Catholic feminist protest is a more radical discursive politics. Discursive politics, Katzenstein explains, is the politics of meaning making (p. 17). The American Catholic feminists utilize language, cognition, books, and conferences to process and articulate their vision of a just world which includes a feminist worldview. Their meetings, networks, prayer groups, conferences (indeed, confessional conferencing), and reports constitute discursive activism. They have, therefore, a difference in perspective. They form organizational habitats (protected spaces) within the larger institutions. Within the Church, their enclave becomes like a “women-church;” it is not removed from the male bastions of power but seriously engaged as a dissenting, discursive voice. Like the women in the military, the women-church activists use the ethics and rhetoric of the institution to force the institution to abide by its own promises and principles. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, for instance, works to revision women in the Church and the Church's role in social justice.

Radicalism in the Church is shaped by the lack of legal redress since the Church is a private and religious organization. These feminist radicals in the Catholic church are seeking an understanding of the structural or systemic bases of inequality in the church and in society. They are not like Mother Teresa of Calcutta, nursing the poor and ameliorating their pain and suffering. Rather, they focus on “the identifying and rooting out of the very systems that cause the poor to be poor, the homeless to be homeless, and that cause people to die of poverty or oppression” (p. 21).

Katzenstein's research displays the multilevel significance of the law for women who seek equality within institutions. The legalization of claims making in American politics can assist in the institutionalization of feminist protest. She also explores the meaning of protesting from inside institutions. Katzenstein cautions us against the view that inside activism signals the end of the challenges that movement politics initiates.

For women within the military, Katzenstein explains the complicated and contradictory role of the law. She writes, “The law's role is also a normative one, shaping the way activists come to define themselves, see the world around them, and prioritize their agendas. For how can we explain otherwise the fact that activists seize some opportunities but not others?” (p. 165). The military women are feminists by any other name. They do not directly claim the mantle of feminism, yet all their beliefs, positions, justifications, and orientations are feminist.

Katzenstein shows how these women must be Faithful and Fearless: “Given the previously rigid gender-cast system in both military and church, and given the continued risks to career, status, and respect that those who challenge gender ascription incur, such women must be fearless to be faithful to their institutions on feminist terms” (p. 164). Cultures agree on what requires debate and what does not (p. 35). Feminist issues now require debate, and this is great progress. Backlashes against feminism, then, occur because of feminist progress. Katzenstein deftly proves that by demanding a coequal place inside male-dominant institutions, feminists have transported protest into mainstream institutions and have changed institutional and social givens.

Katzenstein's study is sure to be a classic in social movement, feminist, religious, and democratic theory. It is richly deserving of all the awards it has already received (the Marion Irish Award of the American Political Science Association for the best book in women and politics, for instance) and will receive in the future.