Feminism/Women's Studies

1913 - Suffragette throws herself under the King's horse. 1969 - Feminists storm Miss World. Now - Caitlin Moran rewrites "The Female Eunuch" from a bar stool and demands to know why pants are getting smaller. There's never been a better time to be a woman: we have the vote and the Pill, and we haven't been burnt as witches since 1727. However, a few nagging questions do remain...Why are we supposed to get Brazilians? Should you get Botox? Do men secretly hate us? What should you call your vagina? Why does your bra hurt? And why do... read more

At the heart of this striking collection is the title work: a candid and wrenching exploration of Castle's relationship, during her graduate school years, with a female professor. At once hilarious and rueful, it is a pitch-perfect recollection of the fiascos of youth: how we come to own (or disown) our sexuality; how we understand (or fail to) the emotional needs and wishes of others; how the ordeals of desire can prompt a lifelong search for self-understanding. With The Professor: And Other Writings Terry Castle cements her reput... read more

From 1983 to 2002, Trouble and Strife: The Radical Feminist Magazine was a distinctive voice in British feminism. It was the longest-surviving completely independent feminist periodical published in this period and it combined the intellectual depth of an academic journal with the accessibility, topicality and visual appeal of commercial feminst magazines such as Everywoman and Spare Rib. Featuring articles by internationally prominent feminists including Julie Bindel, Deborah Cameron, Beatrix Campbell, Patricia Duncker, Liz Kelly ... read more

Pragmatism, humour, stubborn bloody-mindedness - what else does a woman need to carry her through the ups and downs of her life's work? Her Life's Work chronicles the extraordinary life stories of five New Zealand women - Jacqueline Fahey, Merimeri Penfold, Anne Salmond, Gaylene Preston and Margaret Mahy. As artists, writers, teachers, filmmakers and thinkers each has carved out an impressive career, balancing society's gender expectations with the pursuit of a meaningful identity through creative work. Born between 1920 and 1947, ... read more

In this definitive volume, respected historian Christine Stansell tells the story of one of the great democratic movements of our times. She paints richly detailed portraits of well-known leaders--Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Betty Friedan--but others, too, appear in a new light, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Toni Morrison. Accounting for the failures of feminism as well as the successes, Stansell notes the emergence in the early 1900s of the dashing"New Woman"; the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gra... read more

She has been known as the 'kept woman', the 'fancy woman' and the 'other woman'. She exists as both a fictional character and flesh-and-blood human being. But who is she, really?
What do Madame de Pompedour, Heloise, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Eyre and Camilla Parker-Bowles have in common? Why do women become mistresses, and what is it like to have a private life that is usually also a secret life? Is a mistress merely a wife-in-waiting, or is she the very definition of the emancipated, independent female? In Mistresses Elizabeth ... read more

The world is a fraught place for the contemporary female.
Working mothers are still expected to make their children's costumes for the school play, despite the fact that home economics was abolished in the Seventies; we're told it's not looks but brains that count, and yet if we dare to leave the house looking vaguely our age we're made to feel like failures; women's magazines run earnest articles about the evils of size 0 culture, only to feature models with hips like 10-year-old boys a few pages later; we pay the same level... read more

Joanna Bourke, author of the critically-acclaimed Fear, unflinchingly and controversially moves away from looking at victims to look at the rapists. She examines the nature of rape, drawing together the work of criminologists, sociologists and psychiatrists to analyse what drives the perpetrators of sexual violence. Rape - A History looks at the perception of rape, both in the mass media and the wider public, and considers the crucial questions of treatment and punishment. Should sexual offenders be castrated? Will Freud's couch or... read more

In the struggle for women's equality, there is one subject still shrouded in uneasy silence - women's compulsive pursuit of beauty. The myth of female beauty challenges every woman, every day of her life. The author exposes the tyranny of the beauty myth through the ages and its oppressive function today, in the home and at work, in literature and the media, in relationships between men and women, between women and women. With examples, she confronts the beauty industry and its advertising and uncovers the reasons why women are con... read more

A new cover re-issue of the ground-breaking, worldwide bestselling feminist tract. A worldwide bestseller, translated into over twelve languages, THE FEMALE EUNUCH is a landmark in the history of the women's movement. Drawing liberally from history, literature and popular culture, past and present, Germaine Greer's searing examination of women's oppression is at once an important social commentary and a passionately argued masterpiece of polemic. Probably the most famous, most widely read book on feminism ever.

The term 'feminism' came into English usage around the 1890s, but women's conscious struggle to resist discrimination and sexist oppression goes much further back. This completely new and updated edition of "Introducing Feminism" surveys the major developments that have affected women's lives from the 17th century to the present day. "Introducing Feminism" is an invaluable reference book for anyone seeking the story of how feminism reconfigured the world for women and men alike.

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting team, husband and wife Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, take us on a journey through Africa and Asia to meet an extraordinary array of exceptional women struggling against terrible circumstances.
More girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they are girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century combined. More girls are killed in this routine 'gendercide' in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth c... read more

Throughout the 1970s and '80s, women argued that unless they gained access to information about their own bodies, there would be no equality. In "Bodies of Knowledge", Wendy Kline considers the ways in which ordinary women worked to position the female body at the center of women's liberation. As Kline shows, the struggle to attain this knowledge unified women but also divided them - according to race, class, sexuality, or level of professionalization. Each of the five chapters of "Bodies of Knowledge" examines a distinct moment or... read more

Is there such a thing as a 'feminist technology'? If so, what makes a technology feminist? Is it in the design process, in the thing itself, in the way it is marketed, or in the way it is used by women (or by men)? In this collection, feminist scholars trained in diverse fields consider these questions by examining a range of products, tools, and technologies that were specifically designed for and marketed to women. Evaluating the claims that such products are liberating for women, the contributors focus on case studies of menstru... read more

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, ordinary women affiliated with the women's movement were responsible for a veritable explosion of periodicals, poetry, and manifestos, as well as performances designed to support 'do-it-yourself' education and consciousness-raising. Kathryn Thoms Flannery discusses this outpouring and the group education, brainstorming, and creative activism it fostered as the manifestation of a feminist literacy quite separate from women's studies programs at universities or the large-scale political workings of ... read more

What does social equality mean now, in a world of markets, global power and new forms of knowledge? In Confronting Equality, Raewyn Connell combines vivid research with theoretical insight and radical politics to address this question. The focus moves across family change, class and education, intellectual workers, and the global dimension of social science, to contemporary theorists of knowledge and global power, and the political dilemmas of today's left. Written with clarity and passion, the book proposes a bold agenda for socia... read more

'When is an atlas a page-turner? When it makes the female half of the world visible in reliable statistics and glorious graphics. Nobody should be without this book' - Gloria Steinem. 'A wonderfully illuminating and clear sighted book. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the reality of women's lives worldwide' - Melissa Benn. 'A fascinating atlas. It is not only an invaluable reference book, but also throws up questions about why a woman's lot is not as good as a man's' - "The Independent". To improve the state of ... read more

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A new release of Vandana Shiva's classic with a new introduction. Shiva links the violation of nature with the violation and marginalisation of women in the Third World by examining the position of women in relation to nature - the forests, the food chain and water supplies. She shows how science, technology and politics, along with the workings of the economy itself, are inherently exploitative. Every area of human activity marginalises and burdens both women and nature. Shiva suggests that there is only one path to survival and l... read more

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, a wave o state-sponsored ‘national ftness’ programmesswept Britain and its former colonies. Following revelations of the Nazi enthusiasm for government-backed sports and the organisation of mass leisure, the programmes quickly foundered. They probably laid, however, the foundations for the twentieth century’sobsession with ftness – a key facet of modern life.In this highly original account, Charlotte Macdonald shows how governments bec... read more