Although women have typically been left out of collections of ‘world changing speeches’ – with a few rare exceptions – the history of pioneers in women’s rights and inspirational women across the fields of politics, civil rights, science and technology, arts, sports and more, is a rich seam of research. Below are just some of the fascinating resources I drew inspiration from while writing this book – your starting point for a mind-opening feminist reading list, if you will:
A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf (Penguin Classics)
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft (Penguin Classics)
Dead Feminists: Historic Heroines in Living Color, Chandler O’Leary and Jessica Spring (Sasquatch Books)
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Sheryl Sandberg (W.H. Allen)
Men Explain Things to Me: And Other Essays, Rebecca Solnit (Granta)
Modern Women: 52 Pioneers, Kira Cochrane (Frances Lincoln)
The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women, Naomi Wolf (Vintage)
The Feminist Promise: 1792 to the Present, Christine Stansell (Modern Library)
The Feminist Mystique, Betty Friedan (Penguin Classics)
The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir (Vintage Classics)
We Should All Be Feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fourth Estate)
Women & Power: A Manifesto, Mary Beard (Profile Books)