Every March since 2014, I have read a selection for Women’s History Month. I have generally chosen works connected with Feminism. Although demonized by the Cultural Fundamentalist circles I was raised in (and sadly by an increasingly reactionary and fundamentalist Evangelicalism as well), it really shouldn’t be controversial. Feminism is simply this:
The Social, Political, and Economic Equality of men and women.
Of course, the problem with this for many is that this idea is anathema to them. Their worldview depends on a structural inequality of the sexes, one where men control the institutions of power and the money we use as a means of exchange. In order to justify this, they cling to ideas of a congenital inferiority of women (whatever euphemisms they use to deny this), whereby women are unfit for leadership, or even control of their own lives and destinies.
Here are my selections by year:
2014: Are Women Human? By Dorothy Sayers
2015: A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft
2016: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
2017: Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz by Barbara Babcock
2018: The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
2019: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
2020: We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
2021: The Second Sex (Part 1) by Simone de Beauvoir
2022: The Second Sex (Part 2) by Simone de Beauvoir
2023: The Group by Mary McCarthy
2024: The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
***
In addition, here are some other books that connect with feminism that I read.
Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton
Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi
The Heavens’ Favorite Murderess by Mariah Jordan
We Need New Stories by Nesrine Malik
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
Woman Without Shame by Sandra Cisneros
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Two Headed Woman by Lucille Clifton
Pandora’s Jar by Natalie Haynes
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
Girls Kill Nazis by James Kopp
Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez
The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Girl Explorers by Jayne Zanglein
The Burgermeister’s Daughter by Steven Ozment
How to Create the Perfect Wife by Wendy Moore
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey by Lady Fiona, Countess of Carnarvon
Nothing Daunted by Dorothy Wickenden
Oh My America by Sara Wheeler
On Gold Mountain by Lisa See
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Such A Strange Lady by Janet Hitchman
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang
Uppity Women of Medieval Times by Vicki León
Broad Band by Claire Evans
The Mechanical Horse by Margaret Guroff
The Radium Girls by Kate Moore
Sex and the Constitution by Geoffrey Stone
The Way We Never Were by Stephanie Koontz
Because of Sex by Gillian Thomas
The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti
All the Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister
Bold Spirit by Linda Laurence Hunt
Educated by Tara Westover
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