Feminism Reading List

Feminist Theory

bell hooks, South End Press
In this beautifully written and carefully argued work, hooks maintains that mainstream feminism’s reliance on white, middle-class, and professional spokeswomen obscures the involvement, leadership, and centrality of women of color and poor women in the movement for women’s liberation.  

The Curious Courtship of Women’s Liberation & Socialism

Batya Weinbaum, South End
“A real step forward in terms of restating Marxism concretely around sex and age; using the Freudian sociology of family to do so; and making the feminist points against both theories clear.” —Eli Zaretsky

Women & Revolution

A Discussion of the Unhappy Marriage of Marxism & Feminism
Edited by Lydia Sargent, South End
The definitive collection on debates and explorations of the
Presents compelling views from New Left period of the Women’s movement…  

For Her Own Good

Barbara Ehrenreich
This dense, well-argued classic underscores the need to take expert advice with a shaker of salt. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English ably show that many experts gleefully hammer recalcitrant souls into a shape acceptable to society, rather than encouraging people to find their own way. The book plunges into 150 years of misbegotten advice to women and questionable insights into feminine nature that have many modern parallels.

 

A Century of Women

The history of women in Britain and the United States in the twentieth century
by Sheila Rowbotham, Viking
Far more than a historical subcategory, women have been driving forces behind world war politics, global migration, maternal welfare, sexual revolution, and modern labor movements. In A Century of Women, renowned historian Sheila Rowbotham charts, decade by decade, the changes in the lives of women and the ways they themselves have uniquely shaped.  

Woman’s Consciousness, Man’s World

Sheila Rowbotham, Penguin
Powerful presentation of feminist theory and analysis…  

Regulating the Lives of Women

Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present
Mimi Abramovitz , South End
This important book looks at the changes in AFDC, Social Security, and Unemployment Insurance and welfare reform. This new edition reveals how welfare policy scapegoats women more than ever to justify widespread retrenchment and to divert the public’s attention from the real causes of the nation’s mounting economic woes.

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