Archives de catégorie : Feminism

BEKLAUTE FRAUEN de Leonie Schöler

How women made history – and men took the credit.

BEKLAUTE FRAUEN
(Stolen Fame: Philosophers, Scholars, Pioneers: History’s Invisible Heroines)
by Leonie Schöler
Penguin, February 2024

Muse, secretary, wife: these are some of the labels used to describe the women whose influence on history has been erased. Their achievements have brought honour and fame to the men close to them – such as Karl Marx, Bertolt Brecht and Albert Einstein, who couldn’t have done what they did without their female friends, daughters or lovers – but they themselves remain largely unknown. The list includes scientists like Rosalind Franklin and Lise Meitner, who, unlike their male colleagues, were never celebrated for their discoveries; and authors and artists like Marie Hirsch, Lou Andreas-Salomé and Hedwig Thun, who hid behind male pseudonyms all their lives in order to be taken seriously. In « Stolen Fame », Schöler tells their stories, introducing us to the women who changed human history and showing that there are still issues around participation and visibility. Behind every successful man is a system that empowers him – and that system stands in every woman’s way.

For fans of Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez, Unlearn Patriarchy by Lisa Jaspers et al., The Patriarchy of Thing » by Rebekka Endler and Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly.

Leonie Schöler is a historian, journalist and presenter. Her articles have been published in taz and Zeit Online, and she also works as an editor and online filmmaker (« Jäger und Sammler », « Y-Kollektiv » and « Auf Klo ») for various broadcasters. Her documentary exposing fraud and money laundering at Germany’s largest meat processing company came out in 2021, and she is the author and director of a 2022 online series about the infamous Wannsee Conference (both shown by ZDF). She produces popular history content for TikTok and Instagram and talks to her more than 170k followers about politics past and present. In 2022, she became presenter of ZDF’s Heureka programme (shown on YouTube).

SEXISM AND SENSIBILITY de Jo-Ann Finkelstein

From Harvard-trained psychologist Jo-Ann Finkelstein, this powerful guide to understanding and dismantling sexism helps parents figure out how to raise girls in a culture that often demeans them.

SEXISM AND SENSIBILITY
Raising Fierce and Empowered Girls in the Modern World
by Jo-Ann Finkelstein
Harmony, September 2024

We live in a world of mixed messages for women: You can be anything you want to be, but don’t expect to be paid equally for it; It’s what is inside that counts, but be sure to wax, bleach, and slim down what’s outside first; You deserve respect and equality, but our laws won’t always protect your rights. Most parents find it easier to tell girls how strong, equal, and powerful they are than to talk about how the world can be particularly difficult or scary for them. But when we don’t address the challenging or disturbing experiences most girls endure, we contribute to the problem.

Jo-Ann Finkelstein has worked with girls for two decades to shake off the toxic messages about beauty, sex, and femininity. She unpacks the universal experiences that girls live with and helps parents safeguard and fine-tune their daughters’ natural “sexism detectors.” SEXISM AND SENSIBILITY is full of concrete solutions for helping girls understand and confront sexism in all its guises.

Jo-Ann Finkelstein, Ph.D., trained as a clinical psychologist at Harvard University and Northwestern University and now maintains a private clinical practice rooted in an understanding of how gender bias, social justice, and mental health intersect. An expert blogger for Psychology Today, her work has been highlighted in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Women’s Health and on HuffPost and CNN. Her writing has appeared in Ms. Magazine, Your Teen Magazine, and Medium, among other publications.

THE GLASS CLIFF de Sophie Williams

THE GLASS CLIFF is a conversation about what happens when women break the rules, and break through The Glass Ceiling.

THE GLASS CLIFF
Why Women in Power are Undermined and How to Fight Back
by Sophie Williams
Macmillan Business, March 2024
(via Randle Editorial & Literary Consultancy)

Have you ever wondered why there are so few success stories of women in business leadership? Or maybe you’ve wondered what life is really like on the other side of The Glass Ceiling? The world of work is supposedly changing, embracing diversity – yet are the opportunities we’re giving to women really equal to those of men?

Drawing on almost 20 years of research from around the world, The Glass Cliff phenomenon – whereby women are often only hired in leadership roles when a business is already underperforming, meaning their chances of success are limited before they ever even start in the role – is well established, but little known. Until now.

This is the story of The Glass Cliff: a story of a structural inequality disguising itself as the personal failures of women. When activist Sophie Williams gave her viral TED talk on the subject, she was subsequently flooded with accounts of confident, accomplished women who had taken what seemed like a dream leadership role only to quickly find themselves in a waking nightmare. Without the language to describe their experiences they had been left blaming themselves. But learning about The Glass Cliff enabled them to reframe and reexamine what they’d gone through.

Sophie Williams is a professional speaker, the author of Millennial Black & Anti-Racist Ally, a TED speaker, the voice behind @OfficialMillennialBlack, and a racial equity consultant. As a speaker, Sophie regularly delivers keynotes, presentations, workshops and training sessions for businesses such as Apple, Amazon, Google, Barclays, the NHS and more. Sophie’s writing has appeared in publications such as The Guardian, Bustle, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Refinery29, Elle and Grazia.

FOUR MOTHERS d’Abigail Leonard

In the tradition of Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women and Robert Kolker’s Hidden Valley Road, FOUR MOTHERS follows four women—Anna from Finland, Tsukasa from Japan, Sarah from the U.S., and Chelsea from Kenya—through the first year of motherhood.

FOUR MOTHERS
by Abigail Leonard
Algonquin, Fall 2025)
(via The Friedrich Agency)

Abigail blends reporting, research, and history to create an international portrait of new motherhood and the policies that scaffold this transitional phase of life. As debates surrounding paid leave, universal daycare, and national healthcare rage on across different corners of the globe, FOUR MOTHERS is an intimate narrative of what those policies mean in the everyday lives of four women—and a compelling argument for the necessity and urgency of supporting parents.

Abigail Leonard is an award-winning international reporter and news producer. Her work has appeared in NPR, Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, and Vox. She has written and produced long-form news documentaries for PBS, ABC and Al Jazeera America. Stories she reported have earned an Emmy Award, an Overseas Press Club Award, an Association of Health Care Journalists Award, a National Headliner Award, and a James Beard Foundation Media Award Nomination.

STRENGTH & POWER de Starre Vartan

STRENGTH & POWER will explore the groundbreaking current research that examines the myths and shatters our misconceptions relating to the ingrained belief that still very much holds sway today: men are physically stronger than women.

STRENGTH & POWER:
The Untold, Ignored, and Belittled Science of Women’s Bodies
by Starre Vartan
Seal Press/Hachette US, 2025
(via The Martell Agency)

Vartan undertook the project of looking for the scientific evidence to back this proposition up and…couldn’t find it. The book will examine the actual data, the history of “male only” baselines in past studies, and the extensive body of current research that proves that women aren’t “weaker,” in fascinating, eye-opening counterintuitive detail, such as:

• women’s muscles retain strength over time better than men’s;
• women’s fat and metabolism are huge advantages for any pursuit that requires endurance;
• the biology of women’s brains makes women far more resilient in the face of stress.

The bottom line is that men’s bodies are generally good at certain physical pursuits—while women’s are generally better at others. But how you get from there to the idea that men are overall stronger? That is the crux of this challenging and provocative book that will draw on cutting edge studies and touch on a wide range of topics: women’s athletic training, women’s performance in long-distance events across multiple sporting disciplines, women’s longevity, the role that menstruation, hormones and distribution of body fat play in women’s physical power and, of course, the profound cultural influences that have long governed society’s view of women’s physical capabilities.

Starre Vartan is the ideal person to write this book. Her science background and proven effective interaction with researchers with two decades of writing, a decade of founding and running a popular women’s health and lifestyle website and social media platforms, and recent work in investigative journalism, all point to her expertise as an independent science journalist with deep media experience, with a range of contacts both in the science publishing space, and in the women’s health and lifestyle area. On the science side, she has written on health for CNN and biotechnology and health for Scientific American, is a contributor to such publications as Nat Geo, Treehugger, Slate, Gizmodo, The Daily Beast and New York magazine. Her long-form investigative piece on the scientists exiting the Trump administration was published at the end of 2020 in Undark and a piece of investigative journalism for NatGeo in early 2022 on how the DNA technique used to catch the Golden State Killer is being used to track elephant ivory smugglers and convict wildlife criminals.