We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere


Gillian Anderson - 2017
    It’s about transitioning from a me-first culture and imagining what a we-based world might look like. In We, Anderson and Nadel ask why so many women are locked in cycles of depression, addiction, self-criticism, and even self-harm. How much more effective and powerful would we all be if we replaced our current patterns of competition, criticism, and comparison with collaboration, cooperation, and compassion? Putting these values at the center of our lives allows each of us to be happier and more empowered, and to replace harmful habits with a more positive, peaceful, and rewarding way of being. We is a rallying cry for “every woman, everywhere on the planet. Open to any page. And there you will find a truth that can set you free” (Christiane Northrup, MD, author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom).

The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World


Melinda French Gates - 2019
    Her goal, as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift a society up, invest in women.In this candid and inspiring book, Gates traces her awakening to the link between women's empowerment and the health of societies. She shows some of the tremendous opportunities that exist right now to “turbo-charge" change. And she provides simple and effective ways each one of us can make a difference.Convinced that all women should be free to decide whether and when to have children, Gates took her first step onto the global stage to make a stand for family planning. That step launched her into further efforts: to ensure women everywhere have access to every kind of job; to encourage men around the globe to share equally in the burdens of household work; to advocate for paid family leave for everyone; to eliminate gender bias in all its forms.Throughout, Gates introduces us to her heroes in the movement towards equality, offers startling data, shares moving conversations she's had with women from all over the world—and shows how we can all get involved.A personal statement of passionate conviction, this book tells of Gates' journey from a partner working behind the scenes to one of the world's foremost advocates for women, driven by the belief that no one should be excluded, all lives have equal value, and gender equity is the lever that lifts everything.

Bad Feminist


Roxane Gay - 2014
    I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink—all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I’m not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue.In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman of color while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years and commenting on the state of feminism today. The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture.Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.Feel me, see me, hear me, reach me --Peculiar benefits --Typical first year professor --To scratch, claw or grope clumsily or frantically --How to be friends with another woman --Girls, girls, girls --I once was Miss America --Garish, glorious spectacles --Not here to make friends --How we all lose --Reaching for catharsis : getting fat right (or wrong) and Diana Spechler's Skinny --The smooth surfaces of idyll --The careless language of sexual violence --What we hunger for --The illusion of safety/the safety of illusion --The spectacle of broken men --A tale of three coming out stories --Beyond the measure of men --Some jokes are funnier than others --Dear young ladies who love Chris Brown --So much they would let him beat them --Blurred lines, indeed --The trouble with Prince Charming, or, He who trespassed against us --The solace of preparing fried foods and other quaint remembrances from 1960s Mississippi : thoughts on The help --Surviving Django --Beyond the struggle narrative --The morality of Tyler Perry --The last day of a young black man --When less is more --The politics of respectability --When Twitter does what journalism cannot --The alienable rights of women --Holding out for a hero --A tale of two profiles --The racism we all carry --Tragedy, call, compassion, response --Bad feminist : take one --Bad feminist : take two

I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame


Brené Brown - 2007
    Addiction, perfectionism, fear and blame are just a few of the outward signs that Dr. Brené Brown discovered in her 6-year study of shame’s effects on women. While shame is generally thought of as an emotion sequestered in the shadows of our psyches, I Thought It Was Just Me demonstrates the ways in which it is actually present in the most mundane and visible aspects of our lives—from our mental and physical health and body image to our relationships with our partners, our kids, our friends, our money, and our work. After talking to hundreds of women and therapists, Dr. Brown is able to illuminate the myriad shaming influences that dominate our culture and explain why we are all vulnerable to shame. We live in a culture that tells us we must reject our bodies, reject our authentic stories, and ultimately reject our true selves in order to fit in and be accepted.Outlining an empowering new approach that dispels judgment and awakens us to the genuine acceptance of ourselves and others, I Thought It Was Just Me begins a crucial new dialogue of hope. Through potent personal narratives and examples from real women, Brown identifies and explains four key elements that allow women to transform their shame into courage, compassion and connection. Shame is a dark and sad place in which to live a life, keeping us from connecting fully to our loved ones and being the women we were meant to be. But learning how to understand shame’s influence and move through it toward full acceptance of ourselves and others takes away much of shame’s power to harm.It’s not just you, you’re not alone, and if you fight the daily battle of feeling like you are—somehow—just not "enough," you owe it to yourself to read this book and discover your infinite possibilities as a human being.

More Than a Body: Your Body Is an Instrument, Not an Ornament


Lexie Kite - 2020
    With insights drawn from their extensive body image research, Lindsay and Lexie—PhDs and founders of the nonprofit Beauty Redefined (and also twin sisters!)—lay out an action plan that arms you with the skills you need to reconnect with your whole self and free yourself from the constraints of self-objectification.From media consumption to health and fitness to self-reflection and self-compassion, Lindsay and Lexie share powerful and practical advice that goes beyond “body positivity” to help readers develop body image resilience—all while cutting through the empty promises sold by media, advertisers, and the beauty and weight-loss industries. In the process, they show how facing your feelings of body shame or embarrassment can become a catalyst for personal growth.

The Second Sex


Simone de Beauvoir - 1949
     This long-awaited new edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English translation. Vital and groundbreaking, Beauvoir’s pioneering and impressive text remains as pertinent today as it was back then, and will continue to provoke and inspire generations of men and women to come.

Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype


Clarissa Pinkola Estés - 1992
    Her name is Wild Woman, but she is an endangered species. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., Jungian analyst and cantadora storyteller shows how women's vitality can be restored through what she calls "psychic archeological digs" into the ruins of the female unconsious. Using multicultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories, Dr. Estes helps women reconnect with the healthy, instinctual, visionary attributes of the Wild Woman archetype.Dr. Estes has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.

Nobody's Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs, and Trolls


Carrie Goldberg - 2019
     “We are all a moment away from having our life overtaken by somebody hell-bent on our destruction.” That grim reality—gleaned from personal experience and twenty years of trauma work—is a fundamental principle of Carrie Goldberg's cutting-edge victims' rights law firm.Riveting and an essential timely conversation-starter, Nobody's Victim invites readers to join Goldberg on the front lines of the war against sexual violence and privacy violations as she fights for revenge porn and sextortion laws; uncovers major Title IX violations; and sues the hell out of tech companies, schools, and powerful sexual predators. Her battleground is the courtroom; her crusade is to transform clients from victims into warriors.In gripping detail, Goldberg shares the diabolical ways her clients are attacked and how she, through her unique combination of advocacy, badass relentlessness, risk-taking, and client-empowerment, pursues justice for them all. There are stories about a woman whose ex-boyfriend made fake bomb threats in her name and caused a national panic; a fifteen-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted on school grounds and then suspended when she reported the attack; and a man whose ex-boyfriend used a dating app to send more than 1,200 men to ex's home and work for sex. With breathtaking honesty, Goldberg also shares her own shattering story about why she began her work and the uphill battle of building a business.While her clients are a diverse group—from every gender, sexual orientation, age, class, race, religion, occupation, and background—the offenders are not. They are highly predictable. Goldberg offers a taxonomy of the four types of offenders she encounters most often at her firm: assholes, psychos, pervs, and trolls. “If we recognize the patterns of these perpetrators,” she explains, “we know how to fight back.”Deeply personal yet achingly universal, Nobody's Victim is a bold and much-needed analysis of victim protection in the internet era. It is an urgent warning of a coming crisis, a predictor of imminent danger, and a weapon to take back control and protect ourselves—both online and off.

Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide


Linda Babcock - 2003
    The women just don't ask. It turns out that whether they want higher salaries or more help at home, women often find it hard to ask. Sometimes they don't know that change is possible--they don't know that they can ask. Sometimes they fear that asking may damage a relationship. And sometimes they don't ask because they've learned that society can react badly to women asserting their own needs and desires.By looking at the barriers holding women back and the social forces constraining them, Women Don't Ask shows women how to reframe their interactions and more accurately evaluate their opportunities. It teaches them how to ask for what they want in ways that feel comfortable and possible, taking into account the impact of asking on their relationships. And it teaches all of us how to recognize the ways in which our institutions, child-rearing practices, and unspoken assumptions perpetuate inequalities--inequalities that are not only fundamentally unfair but also inefficient and economically unsound.With women's progress toward full economic and social equality stalled, women's lives becoming increasingly complex, and the structures of businesses changing, the ability to negotiate is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Drawing on research in psychology, sociology, economics, and organizational behavior as well as dozens of interviews with men and women from all walks of life, Women Don't Ask is the first book to identify the dramatic difference between men and women in their propensity to negotiate for what they want. It tells women how to ask, and why they should.

Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger


Soraya Chemaly - 2018
    Too sensitive, or not sensitive enough. Too dowdy or too made-up. Too big or too thin. Sluts or prudes. We are harassed, told we are asking for it, and asked if it would kill us to smile. Yes, yes it would.Contrary to the rhetoric of popular “self-help” and an entire lifetime of being told otherwise, our rage is one of the most important resources we have, our sharpest tool against both personal and political oppression. We’ve been told for so long to bottle up our anger, letting it corrode our bodies and minds in ways we don’t even realize. Yet our anger is a vital instrument, our radar for injustice and a catalyst for change. On the flip side, the societal and cultural belittlement of our anger is a cunning way of limiting and controlling our power.We are so often told to resist our rage or punished for justifiably expressing it, yet how many remarkable achievements in this world would never have gotten off the ground without the kernel of anger that fueled them? Rage Becomes Her makes the case that anger is not what gets in our way, it is our way, sparking a new understanding of one of our core emotions that will give women a liberating sense of why their anger matters and connect them to an entire universe of women no longer interested in making nice at all costs.Following in the footsteps of classic feminist manifestos like The Feminine Mystique and Our Bodies, Ourselves, Rage Becomes Her is an eye-opening book for the twenty-first century woman: an engaging, accessible credo offering us the tools to re-understand our anger and harness its power to create lasting positive change.

The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued


Ann Crittenden - 2001
    In this provocative book, award-winning economics journalist Ann Crittenden argues that although women have been liberated, mothers have not. Drawing on hundreds of interviews from around the country, as well as the most current research in economics, sociology, history, child development,. and law, she shows how mothers are systematically disadvantaged and made dependent by a society that celebrates the labor of child-rearing but undervalues and even exploits those who perform it. The price of motherhood is everywhere apparent. College-educated women pay a "mommy tax" of more than a million dollars in lost income when they have a child. Family law deprives mothers of financial equality in marriage. Most child care is excluded from the gross domestic product, at-home mothers are not counted in the labor force, and the social safety net simply leaves them out. With passion and clarity, Crittenden dismantles the principal argument for the status quo: that it's a woman's "choice." She demonstrates, on the contrary, that if mothers had more resources and respect, everyone -- including children -- would be better off. Bold and galvanizing, full of innovative solutions, The Price of Motherhood reveals the glaring disparity between the value created by mothers' work and the reward women receive for carrying out society's most important job.

Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls: A Handbook for Unapologetic Living


Jes Baker - 2015
    Among the many Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls that you don't want to miss:1. It's Possible to Love Your Body (Today. Now.)2. You Can Train Your Brain to Play Nice3. Your Weight Is Not a Reflection Of Your Worth4. Changing Your Tumblr Feed Will Change Your Life5. Salad Will Not Get You to Heaven6. Cheesecake Will Not Send You to HellWith her trademark wit, honesty, and rallying spirit, veteran blogger and advocate Jes Baker makes the case for embracing a body-positive worldview, changing perceptions about weight, and making mental wellness a priority. Alongside notable guest essayists, Baker calls on all people to reject fat prejudice, fight body-shaming at the hands of marketing and media, and join the life-changing movement with one step: change the world by loving your body. If you're a person with a body, this book is for you.

How to Be Successful without Hurting Men's Feelings: Non-threatening Leadership Strategies for Women


Sarah Cooper - 2018
    Ask for a pay rise? Pushy.Take credit for an idea? Arrogant.Admit a mistake? Weak.Successfully juggle work and family? Unpromotable.In How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men's Feelings, Sarah Cooper, author of the bestselling 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings, illustrates how women can achieve their dreams, succeed in their careers and become leaders, without harming the fragile male ego.This wickedly funny tongue-in-cheek guide includes chapters on ‘How to Ace Your Job Interview Without Over-acing It’, ‘9 Non-threatening Leadership Strategies for Women’, and ‘Choose Your Own Adventure: Do You Want to Be Likeable or Successful?’. It even includes several pages to doodle on while men finish explaining things.When all else fails, there is a set of cut-outable moustaches inside to allow women to seem more man-like, which will probably lead to a quick promotion!PRAISE FOR 100 TRICKS TO APPEAR SMART IN MEETINGS:'A lot of fun and absolutely on the money' Daily Telegraph, Book of the Year'Even though it's mostly a comedy book, I can't help but think how legitmately useful I would have found this in my early twenties' The Pool'Sarah Cooper is uncannily spot on when describing the seemingly innocent behaviours of people attempting to impress others' Christine Tsai, Founding Partner, 500 STARTUPS

Choice: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, and Abortion


Karen E. BenderK.A.C. - 2007
    In addressing a wide range of women’s choices—from using birth control to taking the morning-after pill, from adopting a child to putting a child up for adoption, from having an abortion to bringing a pregnancy to full term—Choice explores the complexities inherent in every reproductive decision.Including twenty-four honest, heartrending essays from established writers such as Francine Prose, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Pam Houston, Ann Hood, and Sarah Messer and emerging talents such as Kimi Faxon Hemingway, Stephanie Anderson, and Ashley Talley, Choice will allow you to truly understand the meaning of the word “choice”—regardless of what side of the debate you stand on.

Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions


Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - 2017
    A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a dear friend from childhood, asking her how to raise her baby girl as a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie's letter of response.Here are fifteen invaluable suggestions--compelling, direct, wryly funny, and perceptive--for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. From encouraging her to choose a helicopter, and not only a doll, as a toy if she so desires; having open conversations with her about clothes, makeup, and sexuality; debunking the myth that women are somehow biologically arranged to be in the kitchen making dinner, and that men can "allow" women to have full careers, Dear Ijeawele goes right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century. It will start a new and urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.