First published in 1981, The Politics of Reproduction is a critique of traditional political thought. It focuses centrally upon the nature and difference of male and female experience of biological reproduction, and upon the impact of male reproductive experience on the theory and practice of politics.

Mary O'Brien presents a controversial revision of dialectical materialism, arguing that Marx, as a charter-member of an exclusively masculine tradition of political thought, could not provide the theoretical grounds for true social reformation. Only feminism, she argues, is currently a major progressive force in western history: the impact of reproductive technology on female consciousness is a world historical event which must be given theoretical and political expression.

The new model of historical process offered here, in preliminary form, gives due weight to the struggle of the sexes which has its historical reality in the separation of public and private life. The model is founded on an analysis of male-stream thought from the Athenian polis to our own day, and it makes possible a radical interpretation of contemporary women's experience that never lapses into either a historicism or simple rage.

Mary O'Brien was a renowned philosopher, feminist scholar and Professor in the Department of Sociology in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Besides her academic duties, O'Brien was highly involved in the feminist movement in Canada and was one of the founders of the Feminist Party of Canada in 1979.