March 2026 | Women's History Month: Women's Rights

Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir's masterwork is a powerful analysis of the Western notion of "woman," and a groundbreaking exploration of inequality and otherness. This long-awaited new edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English translation. Vital and groundbreaking, Beauvoir's pioneering and impressive text remains as pertinent today as it...

"Feminist skepticism of a canon is healthy. To Gay, a feminist canon is subjective and always evolving, and represents a long history of feminist scholarship. Ten years after her New York Times bestselling essay collection Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay edits The Portable Feminist Reader for Penguin Classics, an anthology of texts that are diverse in feminist thought, strikingly relevant, and dynamic. Sixty-five selections include ancient, historic, and...

"A riveting history of the American West told for the first time through the pioneering women who used the challenges of migration and settlement as opportunities to advocate for their rights, and transformed the country in the process. Between 1840 and 1910, over half a million men and women traveled deep into the underdeveloped American West, the vast lands that extended from the Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean. Survival in this uncharted region...

"Iceland is the best place on earth to be a woman-but why? For the past twelve years, the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report has ranked Iceland number one on its list of countries closing the gap in equality between men and women. What is it about Iceland that makes many women's experience there so positive? Why has their society made such meaningful progress in this ongoing battle, from electing the world's first female president to...

Two essays connect the past with the present, tracing the history of misogyny to its ancient roots and examining the pitfalls of gender.

"In this vibrant, high-spirited history, medievalist Eleanor Janega turns to the Middle Ages to unfurl its suppositions about women and reveal what's shifted over time--and what hasn't. Enshrined medieval thinkers, almost always male, subscribed to classical Greek and Roman philosophy and Christian theology for their concepts of the sexes, deriding women as oversexed sinners, inherently lustful, insatiable, and weak. In contrast, drawing on accounts...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Reviving Ophelia, a guide to wisdom, authenticity, and bliss for women as they age. Women growing older contend with ageism, misogyny, and loss. Yet as Mary Pipher shows, most older women are deeply happy and filled with gratitude for the gifts of life. Their struggles help them grow into the authentic, empathetic, and wise people they have always wanted to be. In Women rowing north, Pipher offers a timely...

"Entertainment journalist and former senior editor at NYLON Sesali Bowen's NOTES FROM A TRAP FEMINIST: a text for the hot girl era, combining rule-breaking feminist theory, a gendered analysis of contemporary hip-hop, and the author's humorous personal narrative"-- Provided by publisher.

"An incisive, intersectional look at the mother of all gender biases: a resistance to women's authority and power. Every woman has a story of being underestimated, ignored, challenged, or patronized in the workplace. Maybe she tried to speak up in a meeting, only to be talked over by male colleagues. Or a client addressed her male subordinate instead of her. Despite the progress we've made toward equality, we still fail, more often than we might realize,...

"From Roxane Gay comes this collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation. 'Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink--all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I'm not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue.' ...