It hardly needs to be said, but it ain’t easy being a woman in a man’s world. Whether it’s the contributions of women in STEM being overlooked or uncredited, or institutional bias keeping women from getting justice, or simply a tough day in the workplace having to take the notes in a meeting and get everyone coffee while the men sit around feeling clever – it can be validating to see these experiences reflected on the page. Here are twenty books about being a woman in a man’s world.
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
Blurb: “From government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, and the media. Invisible Women reveals how in a world built for and by men we are systematically ignoring half of the population, often with disastrous consequences. Caroline Criado Perez brings together for the first time an impressive range of case studies, stories and new research from across the world that illustrate the hidden ways in which women are forgotten, and the profound impact this has on us all.” Read my full review of Invisible Women here.
Daisy Jones And The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Blurb: “Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity… until now. Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ‘n’ roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things. Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.” Read my full review of Daisy Jones And The Six here.
Emotional Female by Yumiko Kadota
Blurb: “Yumiko Kadota was every Asian parent’s dream- model student, top of her class in medical school and on track to becoming a surgeon. But if the punishing hours in surgery weren’t hard enough, she also faced challenges as a young female surgeon navigating a male-dominated specialty. She was regularly left to carry out complex procedures without senior surgeons’ oversight; she was called all sorts of things, from ’emotional’ to ‘too confident’; and she was expected to work a relentless on-call roster – sometimes seventy hours a week or more – to prove herself. Eventually it was too much and Yumiko quit. Emotional Female is her account of what it was like to train in the Australian public hospital system, and what made her walk away.” Read my full review of Emotional Female here.
Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
Blurb: “Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA’s greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country’s future. How did these brilliant women overcome the barriers of segregation and sexism to help win the Space Race?” Read my full review of Hidden Figures here.
The Social Circle by Sophie Wan
Blurb: “When Maggie Tang arrives as a transfer-student at UC Berkeley in 2005, she has no idea how her life is about to change. In the hallway of her dingy apartment building, she meets Adam, Charles, and Hari, the friends with whom she’ll create Circle, the world’s first major social media platform. But navigating her ambitions alongside love and friendship isn’t so simple, and when they inevitably collide, Maggie exits Circle in dramatic fashion. The Social Circle is a novel about a group of college friends who found a social media company in the early days of the internet, their scandalous falling out, and the 10-year anniversary exposé that forces them back together again.” Read my full review of The Social Circle here.
Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld
Blurb: “In 1971, Hillary Rodham is a young woman full of promise: Life magazine has covered her Wellesley commencement speech, she’s attending Yale Law School, and she’s on the forefront of student activism and the women’s rights movement. And then she meets Bill Clinton. A handsome, charismatic southerner and fellow law student, Bill is already planning his political career. In each other, the two find a profound intellectual, emotional, and physical connection that neither has previously experienced. In the real world, Hillary followed Bill back to Arkansas, and he proposed several times; although she said no more than once, as we all know, she eventually accepted and became Hillary Clinton. But in Curtis Sittenfeld’s Rodham, Hillary takes a different road.” Read my full review of Rodham here.
The Natural Way Of Things by Charlotte Wood
Blurb: “When the women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in a broken-down property in the middle of a desert, they have no idea where they are or how they came to be there. Doing hard labor under a sweltering sun, guarded by two inept yet vicious jailers, the prisoners soon learn what links them: in each woman’s past is a sexual scandal with a powerful man. They pray for rescue but as the hours turn into days and the days into weeks and months, it becomes clear that the women must rescue themselves. The Natural Way of Things is a lucid and illusory fable and a brilliantly plotted novel of ideas that reminds us of humankind’s own vast contradictions—the capacity for savagery, selfishness, resilience, and redemption all contained by a single, vulnerable body.” Read my full review of The Natural Way Of Things here.
Anatomy by Dana Schwartz
Blurb: “In Anatomy, Hazel Sinnett is a lady who wants to be a surgeon more than she wants to marry. Jack Currer is a resurrection man who’s just trying to survive in a city where it’s too easy to die. When the two of them have a chance encounter outside the Edinburgh Anatomist’s Society, Hazel thinks nothing of it at first. But after she gets kicked out of renowned surgeon Dr. Beecham’s lectures for being the wrong gender, she realizes that her new acquaintance might be more helpful than she first thought. Because Hazel has made a deal with Dr. Beecham: if she can pass the medical examination on her own, Beecham will allow her to continue her medical career. Without official lessons, though, Hazel will need more than just her books―she’ll need corpses to study. Lucky that she’s made the acquaintance of someone who digs them up for a living.” Read my full review of Anatomy here.
Eggshell Skull by Bri Lee
Blurb: “Eggshell Skull: a well-established legal doctrine that a defendant must ‘take their victim as they find them’. If a single punch kills someone because of their thin skull, that victim’s weakness cannot mitigate the seriousness of the crime. But what if it also works the other way? What if a defendant on trial for sexual crimes has to accept his ‘victim’ as she comes: a strong, determined accuser who knows the legal system, who will not back down until justice is done? Bri Lee began her first day of work at the Queensland District Court as a bright-eyed judge’s associate. Two years later she was back as the complainant in her own case. This is the story of Bri’s journey through the Australian legal system; first as the daughter of a policeman, then as a law student, and finally as a judge’s associate in both metropolitan and regional Queensland-where justice can look very different, especially for women.” Read my full review of Eggshell Skull here.
Be A Good Girl, Valerie by Marcia Van Zeller
Blurb: “When Valerie, now in her sixties, learns that her Gen Z co-worker, Anna, has effectively been fired for rejecting the boss’s advances, Valerie becomes her champion, and so ensures that justice will prevail. But it brings back traumatic memories of when Valerie herself was the victim of sexual assault when working as an aspiring TV reporter in 1970s London. Exposing the unfair consequences of saying ‘no’ in the workplace, Be A Good Girl, Valerie vividly and with warm humour illustrates the power of standing up for another woman’s rights, and your own.” Read my full review of Be A Good Girl, Valerie here.
Becky by Sarah May
Blurb: “It’s peak 90s London. Scandal dominates the headlines, men dominate the board rooms, and Becky Sharp will stop at nothing to reach the top at the Mercury newspaper. Mingling with tabloid millionaires and trading favours with royalty, Becky lands scoop after scoop, ruthlessly carving a place for herself in a world determined to ignore her. These are the biggest stories of the decade, and Becky has something to do with every one of them. But Becky may have more in common with the people she writes about than she thinks – what takes a lifetime to build takes only a moment to destroy… Darkly entertaining, Sarah May’s Becky charts the rise and fall of an unforgettable heroine.” Read my full review of Becky here.
The Grand Scheme Of Things by Warona Jay
Blurb: “In The Grand Scheme Of Things, two unlikely friends hatch an extraordinary scheme to expose the theater world. Eddie is an aspiring playwright who dreams of making it big in London’s theater world. But after repeated rejections, Eddie suspects her non-white sounding name might be the problem. Enter Hugo Lawrence Smith: good looking, well-connected, charismatic, and…very white. Stifled by his law degree and looking for a way out of the corporate world, he finds a kindred spirit in Eddie after a chance encounter at a cafe. Together they devise a plan, one which will see Eddie’s play on stage and Hugo’s name in lights.” Read my full review of The Grand Scheme Of Things here.
Her Fidelity by Katharine Pollock
Blurb: “Kathy has worked at beloved Brisbane indie record store Dusty’s Records for half her life. Lately, though, cracks have been appearing in Kathy’s comfortable indie bubble. Her friends – feisty Mel, the only other woman employed at Dusty’s, and straight-laced Alex, whom Kathy has known since preschool – are growing up and moving on, while she’s stuck in a cycle of record store, pub, repeat, with the rest of the Dusty’s music bros. But how do you move forward when you’re stuck in a groove? Her Fidelity is a feminist coming-of-age story for anyone who has ever felt that a song understood them more than their own family, for anyone who has ever felt like the culture they love might not love them back, and for anyone who has ever turned to Stevie Nicks for advice while ignoring the sensible people around them.” Read my full review of Her Fidelity here.
Pain And Prejudice by Gabrielle Jackson
Blurb: “In Pain and Prejudice, acclaimed investigative reporter Gabrielle Jackson takes readers behind the scenes of doctor’s offices, pharmaceutical companies, and research labs to show that—at nearly every level of healthcare—men’s health claims are treated as default, whereas women’s are often viewed as a-typical, exaggerated, and even completely fabricated. The impacts of this bias? Women are losing time, money, and their lives trying to navigate a healthcare system designed for men.” Read my full review of Pain And Prejudice here.
Rapture by Emily Maguire
Blurb: “In Rapture, Agnes is the motherless child of an English priest – a wild and brilliant girl. But when tragedy strikes, she is forced to choose between what is expected of her and the freedom she has always dreamed of. Adopting a bold disguise, she secures a place at the revered Fulda monastery and begins life anew as John the Englishman. A matchless scholar and celebrated teacher, by her middle years she has dazzled the Church hierarchy in Rome, finding herself at the centre of power and intrigue. But in a city where gossip is currency, a secret like hers is dangerous. And when the only person who knows her true identity arrives in Rome, she will risk everything to be known – and loved.” Read my full review of Rapture here.
Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Blurb: “Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results. But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo. Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist.” Read my full review of Lessons In Chemistry here.
Whisper Network by Chandler Baker
Blurb: “Sloane, Ardie, Grace, and Rosalita have worked at Truviv, Inc. for years. The sudden death of Truviv’s CEO means their boss, Ames, will likely take over the entire company. Each of the women has a different relationship with Ames, who has always been surrounded by whispers about how he treats women. Those whispers have been ignored, swept under the rug, hidden away by those in charge. But the world has changed, and the women are watching this promotion differently. This time, when they find out Ames is making an inappropriate move on a colleague, they aren’t willing to let it go. This time, they’ve decided enough is enough. Whisper Network is a witty and timely story that will make you cheer for sisterhood.”
Fighting Hislam by Susan Carland
Blurb: “The Muslim community that is portrayed to the West is a misogynist’s playground; within the Muslim community, feminism is often regarded with sneering hostility. Yet between those two views there is a group of Muslim women many do not believe exists: a diverse bunch who fight sexism from within, as committed to the fight as they are to their faith. Hemmed in by Islamophobia and sexism, they fight against sexism with their minds, words and bodies. Often, their biggest weapon is their religion. In Fighting Hislam, Carland talks with Muslim women about how they are making a stand for their sex, while holding fast to their faith.”
Things You Save In A Fire by Katherine Center
Blurb: “Cassie Hanwell was born for emergencies. As one of the only female firefighters in her Texas firehouse, she’s seen her fair share of them, and she’s a total pro at other people’s tragedies. But when her estranged and ailing mother asks her to give up her whole life and move to Boston, Cassie suddenly has an emergency of her own. The tough, old-school Boston firehouse is as different from Cassie’s old job as it could possibly be. Hazing, a lack of funding, and poor facilities mean that the firemen aren’t exactly thrilled to have a “lady” on the crew―even one as competent and smart as Cassie. Except for the infatuation-inspiring rookie, who doesn’t seem to mind having Cassie around. Things You Save in a Fire is a heartfelt and healing tour-de-force about the strength of vulnerability, the nourishing magic of forgiveness, and the life-changing power of defining courage, at last, for yourself.”
Sex, Lies And Question Time by Kate Ellis
Blurb: “In Sex, Lies and Question Time, former MP Kate Ellis explores the good, the bad and the ugly of life as a woman in Australian politics. Seventy-seven years after the first woman entered Australian parliament, female politicians are still the minority. They cop scrutiny over their appearance, their sex lives, their parenting and their portfolios in a way few of their male colleagues do. It’s time to call bullshit on the toxic Canberra culture. Alongside her own experiences from fifteen years in parliament, Kate Ellis reveals a frank and fascinating picture of women across Australian politics, including Julia Gillard, Julie Bishop, Linda Burney, Sussan Ley, Penny Wong, Sarah Hanson-Young and Pauline Hanson. Kate explores issues like sexism, motherhood, appearances, social media, the sisterhood and, of course, sex. But she also celebrates everything Australian female politicians have achieved.”
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