Economic EmpowermentBooks

Veteran financial journalist Josie Cox's groundbreaking work telling the story of how women have fought for financial freedom and the social and political hurdles that have kept them from equality. From WWII 'Rosies' to the investor who broke into the New York Stock Exchange boys' club, this work chronicles centuries of women's relentless struggle for money and power, while revealing challenges women still face today.

From the author of Factory Girls, a two-year investigative report revealing how globalization's promise of liberation paved the way for oppression. Follow three Egyptian women navigating between traditional culture and modernization demands.

New York Times bestselling historical novelist Philippa Gregory's magnum opus - a groundbreaking feminist nonfiction milestone that radically redefines the extraordinary role ordinary women played in British history. Did you know there are more penises than women in the Bayeux Tapestry? That the 1381 Peasants' Revolt was a tax protest started by women? That Darwin believed women would evolve to become inferior? For the first time, placing women - 50% of the population - at center stage of 900 years of English history.

First-generation Filipino American author Angela Garbes combines memoir with cultural analysis to critically examine mothering expectations and assumptions, revealing how American society depends on yet often overlooks the essential contributions of mothers and family caregivers.

A powerful critique of mainstream feminism's failure to address the basic needs of marginalized women, advocating for housing, food, education, and other survival issues to be at the core of feminist agenda.

Critiques elite feminism and proposes an anti-capitalist feminist vision, linking women's liberation to economic justice, racial equality, and environmental sustainability.

A groundbreaking work written by sex workers themselves, directly challenging mainstream feminist narratives about sex work while providing theoretical foundations and political strategies for the sex workers' rights movement.

A critical examination of how neoliberalism has co-opted feminist discourse, transforming it from a collective movement for social justice into an individualized pursuit of personal empowerment that serves corporate interests while abandoning the vast majority of women.

Susan Burton’s lived account connects trauma, the drug war, repeated incarceration, and reentry, then turns recovery into care and political work led by formerly incarcerated women.

Cathy O’Neil explains how scoring, prediction, and risk models amplify existing inequalities across work, education, finance, and policing.

Women's Poverty is a documentary collection by NHK's 'Women's Poverty' reporting team, revealing the structural causes of women's poverty in Japanese society through in-depth interviews with impoverished Japanese women. This work breaks the myth that 'women's poverty is a personal problem,' showing how gender discrimination, non-regular employment, and gaps in social security together create women's economic hardship.

Anne Allison’s ethnography follows post-bubble stagnation, irregular work, lonely death, and post-Fukushima life to examine what happens when stable family and male-breadwinner institutions unravel.

Cynthia Enloe investigates financial crashes, political crises, peacekeeping, and revolutions by asking what changes when women are treated as politically serious.

Joan C. Tronto recasts care as a central public concern of democracy, asking who sustains life, who is permitted to evade care, and how markets produce a democratic care deficit.

Wei-hsin Yu compares half a century of women’s employment in Japan and Taiwan, showing why organizational arrangements, industrial policy, and life-course institutions matter beyond shared patriarchal culture.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd and Durgabai Vyam reclaim labor, technique, and knowledge devalued by caste in a form accessible to younger readers.

Journalist Barbara Ehrenreich goes undercover to investigate the impact of the 1996 welfare reform act on the working poor in the United States, revealing the brutal reality of low-wage labor and the struggle for survival.

This landmark anthology grounds African feminist politics in struggles over land, work, food, health, citizenship, and state power across ten national contexts.

A foundational work of feminist literary criticism that explores the material and psychological conditions necessary for women's creative work with poetic and incisive insight, proposing influential theories of women's writing.

A groundbreaking 1898 feminist economics work that systematically analyzes the social roots of women's economic dependency and proposes theoretical foundations for women's economic independence. Praised as an important document comparable to Mill's 'The Subjection of Women'.

A classic coming-of-age novel that, through the growth journey of the four March sisters, showcases diverse life choices for 19th-century women, influencing generations of female readers' values and life pursuits.