Women's Studies

Our world is largely built for and by men, in a system that can ignore half the population. This audiobook will tell you how and why this matters.... 

First published three years ago before the print edition of Women Who Run with the Wolves made publishing history, this original audio edition quickly became an underground best seller....

How should we talk about sex? It is a thing we have and also a thing we do: a supposedly private act laden with public meaning, a personal preference shaped by outside forces, a place where pleasure and ethics can pull wildly apart....

Nancy Friday's taboo-shattering best seller My Secret Garden is the most popular and controversial book of women's sexual fantasies ever published. Women who feared their erotic fantasies called it scandalous. Women who recognized their own fantasies in its pages, rejoiced....

It's time to take control of your life and get the love you deserve. This isn't about online dating gimmicks, how to submit to male techniques, or any nonsense that publishers push down your throat....

The term killjoy has been used to dismiss feminism by claiming that it causes misery. But by naming ourselves feminist killjoys, we recover a feminist history, turning it into a source of strength as well as an inspiration....

On October 5, 2017, the New York Times published an article by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey that helped change the world. For months, they had been having confidential discussions with top actresses, former Weinstein employees and other sources, learning of disturbing allegations....

Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries....

After a love affair with a man 3,000 miles away, whom she met online, Suzanne Portnoy, mother of two and a top executive in the entertainment industry, begins her sexual reawakening....

As second-generation members of the royal family who have benefited from Saudi oil wealth, Maha and Amani are surrounded by untold opulence and luxury from the day they were born....

Sarah Polley's work as an actor, screenwriter and director is celebrated for its honesty, complexity and deep humanity. She brings all those qualities, along with her exquisite storytelling chops, to these six essays. Each one captures a piece of Polley's life as she remembers it....

She was known to the world as Emily Doe when she stunned millions with a letter. Brock Turner had been sentenced to just six months in county jail after he was found sexually assaulting her on Stanford's campus....

How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? Author and editor Adrienne Maree Brown finds the answer in something she calls “pleasure activism"....

Feminism is arguably the most significant social movement of the last century and it is far from over....

An empowering audiobook about standing your ground in dating, in marriage, in your career, and anywhere else....

This audiobook narrated by Nancy Crane traces women’s journey to close the gender wage gap and sheds new light on the continued struggle to achieve equity between couples at home....

A Room of One's Own is one of the great feminist polemics. Woolf's blazing writing on female creativity, the role of the writer, and the silent fate of Shakespeare's imaginary sister remains a powerful reminder of a woman's need for financial independence and intellectual freedom....

Wolves abound through cultural folklore and through literature - vilified and venerated in equal measure....

From Emily Ratajkowski, the archetypal, multi-hyphenate celebrity of our time, comes a deeply honest investigation of what it means to be a woman and a commodity....  

The Bengalis are the third largest ethno-linguistic group in the world, after the Han Chinese and the Arabs. A quarter of a billion strong and growing, the community has produced three Nobel laureates, world-class scientists, legendary political leaders and revolutionaries....

Ranging from the age of slavery to contemporary injustices, this groundbreaking history of race, gender and class inequality by the radical political activist Angela Davis offers an alternative view of female struggles for liberation....

In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman....

Incisive, eclectic and politically engaged, Seeing like a Feminist is a bold and wide-ranging book that reorders contemporary society....

In this moving and compelling book, Melinda shares the stories of the inspiring people she’s met during her work and travels around the world and the lessons she’s learned from them....

What does it mean, exactly, to be a Muslim woman in the West today? According to the media, it’s all about the burqa. Here’s what it’s really about.... 

Since the beginning of the #MeToo movement, tens of thousands of people in South Korea have taken to the street, and many more brave individuals took a stand, to end a decades-long abortion ban and bring down powerful men accused of sexual misconduct—including a popular presidential contender. Author Hawon Jung shows the world that these women are no delicate flowers—they are trailblazing flames. Flowers of Fire takes the listener into the trenches of this fight for equality.

According to the Washington Post, no one who cares about contemporary African-American cultures can ignore Bell Hooks's electrifying feminist explorations. Targeting cultural icons as diverse as Madonna and Spike Lee, Outlaw Culture presents a collection of essays that pulls no punches. As Hooks herself notes, interrogations of popular culture can be a "powerful site for intervention, challenge and change." And intervene, challenge, and change is what hooks does best.

In this provocative and captivating dialogue, bell hooks and Cornel West come together to discuss the dilemmas, contradictions, and joys of Black intellectual life. The two friends and comrades in struggle talk, argue, and disagree about everything from community to capitalism in a series of intimate conversations that range from playful to probing to revelatory. In evoking the act of breaking bread, the book calls upon the various traditions of sharing that take place in domestic, secular, and sacred life.

Seks hebben we bijna allemaal. Waarom praten we er dan nauwelijks over? Milou Deelen helpt in Hoe doen we het? veertien inspirerende vrouwen de drempel over, en dat levert bloedeerlijke en herkenbare verhalen op. Onder anderen Hedy d'Ancona, Tjitske Reidinga, Lale Gül, S10, Ellen Laan en Berget Lewis vertellen alles over hun seksuele ontdekkingsreis: van hoe hun eerste keer was, tot met welke seksuele moraal zij zijn grootgebracht, en of ze weleens ongewenste intimiteiten meegemaakt hebben tot wat hun persoonlijke definitie van goede seks is.

On the dawn of 16 July 1990, Liliana Rivera Garza, Cristina Rivera Garza’s sister, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend and subsumed into Mexico's dark and relentless history of femicide. She was a twenty-year-old architecture student who had been trying for years to end her relationship with a high school boyfriend who insisted on not letting her go. A few weeks before the tragedy, Liliana made a definitive decision: at the height of her winter she had discovered that, as Albert Camus had said, there was an invincible summer in her.

Íntima, reveladora y provocadora, Comunión es una obra que desafía a todas las mujeres a que asumamos el valor de reclamar la búsqueda del amor como el viaje heroico que todas debemos escoger para liberarnos de verdad.

Edited by Shelly Oria—author and editor of Indelible in the Hippocampus—this explosive, intersectional collection of essays, fiction, poems, plays, and more, explores the universality of human reproductive experiences, as well as their distinct individuality.

Although there are more women in higher education than ever before—and increasingly in leadership positions—their paths to success are more difficult than those paved for men. Nine Guiding Principles for Women in Higher Education is a concise and accessible resource aimed at helping women faculty succeed in their academic careers. Karyn Z. Sproles offers guidance, humor, and courage to women in higher education, paying particular attention to those with children and women of color.

The term killjoy has been used to dismiss feminism by claiming that it causes misery. But by naming ourselves feminist killjoys, we recover a feminist history, turning it into a source of strength as well as an inspiration. Drawing on her own stories and those of others, especially Black and brown feminists and queer thinkers, Sara Ahmed combines depth of thought with honesty and intimacy. The Feminist Killjoy Handbook unpicks the lies our culture tells us and provides a form of solidarity and companionship that can be returned to over a lifetime.

The wolf is so often depicted as the male predator, preying on the vulnerable girl/woman who strays from the path; the she-wolf meanwhile depicts women who sit outside the accepted boundaries of feminine behaviour. Berry openly recounts her own uncomfortable and sometimes frightening experiences as a woman to try to understand how we navigate our fears when threat can seem constant.

Two people do the same job and are both firefighters. When one is asked what they do for a living, their response is met with: 'That's amazing, you are so brave!', while the other is asked: 'Isn't that dangerous? Aren't you scared? What about your kids?' Can you guess the difference between the two? These comments are the reality for Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton and many other women at work and in life. Gender biases stop women from succeeding - but why are certain qualities associated with success viewed less favourably for women?

A memoir culminating in a manifesto, Holding the Baby sets out to understand why we still treat early parenthood as an individual slog rather than a shared cultural responsibility. Tracing her own journey to the nadir of sleeplessness via social retreat and murderous rage, Frizzell draws on the latest research to explore: What effect does parenting have on your career? How can we make childcare affordable and fit for purpose? If parenting is so hard, why does anyone ever do it more than once?

Es ist das erste Hörbuch, das explizit die Finanzen von Müttern in den Blick nimmt: Die Soziologin Birgit Happel zeigt, wie hoch die Kosten sind, die für Frauen mit Mutterschaft einhergehen. Fehlende Betreuungsangebote, Diskriminierung am Arbeitsplatz, falsche wirtschaftliche Anreize sowie stereotype Erwartungen wirken sich gravierend auf ihr Erwerbseinkommen aus. Unsere Arbeitswelt und die vorherrschende Vollzeitnorm baut auf die Care-Arbeit von Müttern – räumt ihr jedoch keinen angemessenen wirtschaftlichen Stellenwert ein.

La reflexión sobre la condición femenina es urgente en nuestro tiempo.Nunca hasta hoy hemos estado más cerca de comprender la igualdad de valor entre los sexos. Y nunca nos hemos encontrado más alejados y confundidos, al convivir en una cultura que niega el valor de la diferencia. Precisamente en esto reside la paradoja de nuestro mundo. Nuestro tiempo acelerado, obsesionado en "hacer cosas útiles", mina la disposición femenina a la acogida y a la ternura, así como la natural empatía tan propia de la mujer, y su apertura a la vida.

In the late 1960s, Patsy Channing, a stunningly beautiful young woman, was suspended from the venerable Mississippi State College for Women for breach of conduct. The resulting scandal reached all the way to the Columbus courthouse, and the press ate it up. But Patsy's story starts long before that, living with a preoccupied and troubled mother in Memphis, Tennessee. Music becomes her ticket out and a vehicle for the one thing she covets most—a chance to be crowned Miss America. In Confessions of a Southern Beauty Queen, Julie Hines Mabus provides a peek into that world.