Sometime between now and whenever I last read it, A Gift From Earth has been visited with a very heavy dose of the sexism fairy. There will now be some spoilers. And it may even get shrill.... [T]hree women mentioned.... Polly, who is beautiful and resourceful and who spends most of the book waiting to be rescued. Polly gets to sneak around and take photographs, and also martyr herself. The second is Laney, whose job in the revolutionary organization is morale-raising whore.... Laney can program an autopilot, plan an invasion and shoot straight, but her job in the revolution is having sex with the men to keep their spirits up. Right. The third, Lydia, who cooks dinner when they all escape, is described quite without irony or even malice as a “virago” and a “shrew.”
