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Reading List · Women’s RightsThe Best Books About Women’s Rights
Women’s rights cover the legal, political, economic and personal freedoms that women have campaigned for over more than two centuries: the right to an education, to vote, to work on equal terms, to control their own bodies and to be safe from violence. Books on the subject range from founding arguments written in the eighteenth century to recent memoirs and data-driven investigations, and they help readers understand where those rights came from and where they remain contested.
This list mixes history, philosophy, memoir, reportage, essays and fiction. It includes classic texts of feminist thought, first-hand accounts from women who fought for education and justice, global reporting, and one novel that imagines a society in which women’s rights have been removed. Each entry explains what the book covers and which reader it suits.
Twelve books about women’s rights
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Mary Wollstonecraft · 1792
Mary Wollstonecraft wrote this treatise after the French statesman Talleyrand told France’s National Assembly that women needed only a domestic education. She argues that women are as capable of reason as men, that their apparent inferiority comes from being denied education, and that both sexes should be held to the same moral standards. She also takes issue with Rousseau’s Émile.
Written in the wake of the French Revolution, it proposes co-educational national schooling and presents educated women as companions to their husbands rather than ornaments. Its central demand, access to education, runs through much of this list, from Malala Yousafzai to Tara Westover.
Read it if you want to go back to one of the first books to argue for women’s equality.
The Second Sex
Simone de Beauvoir · 1949
Published in French as Le Deuxième Sexe in two volumes, this philosophical study argues that men are treated as the default human and women are defined as the ’Other’. Simone de Beauvoir examines biology, history, myth, marriage and motherhood, and contends that women’s subordinate position is the product of circumstance rather than nature.
Its line ’one is not born, but rather becomes, woman’ is its best-known statement. The book links women’s freedom to release from reproductive burdens and to taking part in paid work. The 2009 English translation by Borde and Malovany-Chevallier restores passages cut from the 1953 version.
Read it if you want the philosophical foundations of modern feminism and are ready for a long, demanding read.
The Feminine Mystique
Betty Friedan · 1963
Betty Friedan describes ’the problem that has no name’: the widespread unhappiness of American women in the 1950s and early 1960s who were told they could find fulfilment only as housewives and mothers. She challenges that ideal, which she calls the feminine mystique, and argues that women need an identity and purpose of their own.
The book is widely credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the United States, and in 1966 Friedan helped found the National Organization for Women, becoming its first president. Critics have noted that it largely overlooks women of colour and working-class women.
Read it if you want to understand how the post-war women’s movement in America began.
Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism
bell hooks · 1981
Taking its title from Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech at a women’s rights convention in Ohio, this book examines how racism and sexism together have shaped the lives of Black women in America, from slavery through the suffrage, civil rights and feminist movements up to the 1970s.
bell hooks argues that a largely white, middle-class women’s movement failed to address the needs of poor and non-white women. The book is widely used in gender studies, Black studies and philosophy courses and is regarded as an important early work on the intersection of race and gender.
Read it if you want to understand why women’s rights cannot be separated from race and class.
The Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood · 1985
In a near-future United States that has become the totalitarian Republic of Gilead, Offred is a Handmaid, a fertile woman forced to bear children for a Commander and his wife. The story moves between her present and flashbacks to her life before the regime. It won the 1985 Governor General’s Award and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award, and was nominated for the 1986 Booker Prize.
The novel imagines what happens when women’s rights, including control over their own bodies, are removed by law. It was adapted as a 1990 film and a 2017 television series starring Elisabeth Moss, and Atwood published a sequel, The Testaments, in 2019.
Read it if you want fiction that shows how quickly rights can be taken away.
Half the Sky
Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn · 2009
Journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn report on the oppression of women in developing countries, covering trafficking and forced prostitution, rape, maternal mortality, genital mutilation and girls’ access to education. The book combines individual stories with practical responses such as schooling and microcredit.
The authors describe the oppression of women worldwide as the paramount moral challenge of the era, comparing it to the fight against slavery. It was the basis of a four-hour PBS documentary in 2012. It suits readers who want a global view of women’s rights and of what can be done.
Read it if you want reportage on women’s rights around the world, with a focus on solutions.
I Am Malala
Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb · 2013
Malala Yousafzai describes her childhood in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, where her father ran schools, and the rise of the Pakistani Taliban, who banned girls from going to school. She recounts writing about life under the Taliban for the BBC under a pseudonym, the 2012 attack on her school bus, and her recovery in Birmingham.
The memoir is a first-hand account of the fight for girls’ right to an education. In 2014 Yousafzai shared the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming its youngest laureate. It suits readers who want a personal story that connects a single life to a global campaign.
Read it if you want a first-hand account of campaigning for girls’ education.
Read my full recommendation →We Should All Be Feminists
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2014
Adapted from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TEDx talk at TEDxEuston in London, this short essay offers a twenty-first-century definition of feminism. Adichie recalls being called a feminist before she knew what the word meant, and argues that feminism seeks equal opportunity for women and men and that the way masculinity is constructed also has to change.
Audio from the talk was used in Beyoncé’s 2013 song ’Flawless’, and in 2015 it was announced that every 16-year-old high school student in Sweden would receive a copy. It works as a concise starting point for readers new to the subject.
Read it if you want a short, accessible introduction you can read in one sitting.
Educated
Tara Westover · 2018
Tara Westover grew up in an isolated survivalist family in the mountains of Idaho, where her father distrusted doctors, the government and public schools. She had no formal schooling before entering Brigham Young University at 17, and went on to study at Cambridge, where she completed a PhD, and at Harvard.
The memoir is not a book about women’s rights campaigns, but it shows what access to education can mean for a young woman’s independence. It explores loyalty to family against loyalty to oneself and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography.
Read it if you want a personal story about education as a route to independence.
Read my full recommendation →Invisible Women
Caroline Criado Perez · 2019
Caroline Criado Perez examines the gender data gap: the failure to collect data on women, which leaves a world designed around men. Her examples range from heart attacks being misdiagnosed in women to crash test dummies modelled on the male body, along with urban design, workplace safety, technology, politics and disaster relief.
The book shows that equality is also a question of how products, services and policies are designed. It won both the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize and the 2019 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.
Read it if you want evidence-based, contemporary arguments about everyday inequality.
Our Women on the Ground
Zahra Hankir (editor) · 2019
This anthology, edited by Zahra Hankir with a foreword by Christiane Amanpour, collects essays by nineteen Arab women journalists reporting from across the Arab world. They write about covering conflict close to home, harassment on Cairo’s streets, the difficulty of travelling without a male relative in Yemen, and the access they gained to women in Syrian clinics.
The essays show how gender shapes both the work and the lives of women reporters, and they challenge stereotypes about Arab women and the region. It suits readers interested in journalism and in women’s experiences in the Middle East.
Read it if you want first-hand perspectives from women reporting in the Arab world.
Read my full recommendation →Know My Name
Chanel Miller · 2019
Chanel Miller was known publicly only as ’Emily Doe’ after she was sexually assaulted by Stanford athlete Brock Turner in January 2015. In this memoir she reclaims her name and describes the assault, the trial of People v. Turner and its aftermath, drawing on court transcripts and testimony she could not see at the time.
The book shows how the legal system treats survivors of sexual violence and what it takes to be heard. It won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. Readers should be aware that it describes sexual assault in detail.
Read it if you want a personal account of seeking justice after sexual violence.
Which book should you read first?
The best starting point depends on what you want from a book.
- For the history of the idea — A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)
- For a short introduction — We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2014)
- For race and gender — Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks (1981)
- For girls’ education — I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb (2013)
- For fiction — The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)
- For a global view — Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (2009)
Where to go next
Frequently asked questions
What is the first book about women’s rights?
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft, published in 1792, is one of the earliest and best-known books to argue for women’s equality, particularly in education.
What is a good short introduction to women’s rights and feminism?
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a short essay adapted from a TEDx talk and can be read in one sitting.
Which book started the second wave of feminism?
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, published in 1963, is widely credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the United States.
Are there novels about women’s rights?
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a dystopian novel in which women in the Republic of Gilead are stripped of their rights, including control over their own bodies.
Which books cover women’s rights outside the West?
I Am Malala, Half the Sky and Our Women on the Ground cover girls’ education in Pakistan, women’s oppression in developing countries and the work of Arab women journalists.
Is there a book about gender inequality in data?
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez examines the gender data gap and won the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize.
Pick the book that answers the question you are asking right now. The rest of the list will still be here when you are ready for the next one.
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