Woman Study

Explore real women’s tales of health-care trauma and medical misogyny with this meticulously researched, in-depth examination of the women’s health crisis in America - and what we can do about it.

The Women’s House of Detention, a landmark that ushered in the modern era of women’s imprisonment, is now largely forgotten. But when it stood in New York City’s Greenwich Village, from 1929 to 1974, it was a nexus for the tens of thousands of women, transgender men, and gender-nonconforming people who inhabited its crowded cells. Some of these inmates—Angela Davis, Andrea Dworkin, Afeni Shakur—were famous, but the vast majority were incarcerated for the crimes of being poor and improperly feminine.

Common people. Maybe you heard their names in a childhood Sunday school class. They're not often the champions or the go-to sermon illustrations. They probably didn't stand at the foot of the cross or even hang next to Jesus on one of their own. But they pepper the pages of the Bible, reminding us that we're not alone. Just like you and me, these ordinary people stumbled and struggled. They faced their own sin and came face-to-face with a God who not only wipes it away, but also makes the common extraordinary.

The Gender Knot, Allan Johnson's response to the pain and confusion that men and women experience by living with gender inequality, explains what patriarchy is and isn't, how it works, and what gets in the way of understanding and doing something about it. Johnson's simple yet powerful approach avoids the paralyzing trap of guilt, blame, anger, and defensive denial that often results from conversations about gender.

Highly acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin lends a resonant voice to a pivotal yet often overlooked character of Vergil's The Aeneid. Born into peace and freedom, Lavinia is stunned to learn that she will be the cause of a great war - or so the prophecies and omens claim. Her fate is sealed, however, when she meets a man from Troy.

From earliest experimentation to habitual excess to full-blown abuse, 24-year-old Koren Zailckas leads us through her experience of a terrifying trend among young girls, exploring how binge drinking becomes routine, how it becomes "the usual". With the stylistic freshness of a poet and the dramatic gifts of a novelist, Zailckas describes her first sip at 14, alcohol poisoning at 16, blacked-out sexual experience at 19, and total disorientation after waking up in an unfamiliar New York City apartment at 22.

Forty years ago in China, marriage was universal, compulsory, and a woman's only means to a livelihood. Enter the one-child policy, which despite its horrors, resulted in China's first generations of urban only-daughters - girls who were raised without brothers and pushed to study, achieve, and succeed as if they were sons. Fast forward to the present, where in an urbanized economic powerhouse, enough of these women have decided to postpone marriage - or not marry at all - to spawn a label: "leftovers". Unprecedentedly well-educated and goal-oriented, they struggle to find partners.

This is perhaps one of the best-loved of all journals. William Wordsworth's sister, Dorothy, began it in May 1800 and resolved to keep it for a short time. She continued it for nearly three years. In it, she brought the Dove Cottage years to vivid and intimate life. She noted the walks and weather, the friends, country neighbours, and travellers on the roads. She set down accounts of the garden, of Wordsworth's marriage, their concern for Coleridge, and the composition of Wordsworth's poetry.

"Slut" is a great word. It just sounds perfect—so sharp and clear and beautiful. It's one of those satisfying four letter words, like c--t and f--k. Slut also happens to be an anagram for lust, which is one of those divine coincidences that makes you wonder if God actually exists. We're lucky that slut is such a great word, because it's safe to say that almost every woman will be called a slut at least once in her lifetime. Despite a slowly shifting sexual double standard, it's still taboo to be a woman who's openly sexual—let alone one who sleeps around.

A gorgeous, darkly humorous memoir for listeners of Cheryl Strayed about a woman overcoming dramatic loss and finding reinvention, based on this award-winning writer's New Yorker article "Thanksgiving in Mongolia".

As the world's attention traces the reluctant social advances in the Middle East, Princess Sultana and her female friends and family have stepped forward to rescue young women in the region who are cruelly mistreated by their husbands, their fathers, and the brutish ISIS soldiers who kidnap them. But inside the Princess' lavish Saudi Arabian palace, sparks of anger and bolts of fear crackle because of the secrets kept to forward her efforts to help women and children.

The Housekeeper's Tale reveals the personal sacrifices, bitter disputes and driving ambition that shaped these women's careers. Using secret diaries, unpublished letters, and the neglected service archives of our stately homes, Tessa Boase tells the extraordinary stories of five working women who ran some of Britain's most prominent households.

Going beyond the message of Lean In and The Confidence Code, Gannett's chief content officer contends that to achieve parity in the office, women don't have to change - men do - and, in this inclusive and realistic audio handbook, offers solutions to help professionals solve gender gap issues and achieve parity at work. Filled with illuminating anecdotes, data from the most recent relevant studies, and stories from Lipman's own journey to the top of a male-dominated industry....

So what if it's true that Black women are mad as hell? They have the right to be. In the Black feminist tradition of Audre Lorde, Brittney Cooper reminds us that anger is a powerful source of energy that can give us the strength to keep on fighting. Far too often, Black women's anger has been caricatured into an ugly and destructive force that threatens the civility and social fabric of American democracy. But Cooper shows us that there is more to the story than that.

As a deafblind woman with partial vision in one eye and bilateral hearing aids, Elsa Sjunneson lives at the crossroads of blindness and sight, hearing and deafness—much to the confusion of the world around her. And she knows how wrong our one-size-fits-all definitions of disability can be. Part memoir, part cultural criticism, part history of the deafblind experience, Being Seen explores how our cultural concept of disability is more myth than fact, and the damage it does to us all.

Rabbi Baruch Bierman used to be a persecutor of women in ministry. He would not allow them to teach or preach. This book is Rabbi Baruch’s life message as an act of restitution to all the women that have been rejected and resisted because of erroneous doctrines in the body of Messiah. It will set men and women FREE!

The Money Mirror shows how women's attitudes towards money reflect their feelings about themselves. Through better understanding the ways they relate to money, women can develop positive emotional attitudes and gain control of economic and personal issues. "Lieberman and Lindner document how intelligent women are still very often prey to . . . a vicious cycle of fear and confusion that prevents us from effectively earning, negotiating, investing, and managing our incomes. This lively, anecdotal book explores women's historical relationship to money, the common symptoms,…. and the antidotes." —(Ms. Magazine) . . .[offers] a wealth of down-to-earth tips on how to develop money awareness on the road to leading healthier, happier financial lives." (The Bookwatch)

Behind our current caregiving crisis, in which a broken system has left parents and caregivers exhausted, sits a fierce addiction to independence. But what would happen if we started to appreciate dependency, and the deep meaning of one person caring for another? If we start to care about care? With a curiosity and desire to understand more fully one of humanity’s most profound and essential relationships, journalist Elissa Strauss she interrogates our societal obsession with going it alone and poses a challenge to let ourselves be transformed by the act of caregiving.

Ever since the release of her seminal first book, Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia has remained one of feminism's most outspoken, independent, and searingly intelligent voices. Now, for the first time, her best essays on the subject are gathered together in one concise volume. At once illuminating, witty, and inspiring, these essays are essential listening that affirm the power of men and women and what we can accomplish together.

The Girl Explorers is the inspirational and untold story of the founding of the Society of Women Geographers - an organization of adventurous female world explorers - and how key members served as early advocates for human rights and paved the way for today's women scientists by scaling mountains, exploring the high seas, flying across the Atlantic, and recording the world through film, sculpture, and literature.