sespursongles:

100 Non-Fiction Books by Women on Women

The links redirect to OpenLibrary, for the books that are available to be read there.

Language, Writing, Reading

• Women and Autobiography in the Twentieth Century, Linda R. Anderson
• Women and Writing, Virginia Woolf
• Women in the Language and Society of Japan: The Linguistic Roots of Bias, Naoko Takemaru (also: Womansword: What Japanese Words Say About Women, Cherry Kittredge)
• Man-Made Language, Dale Spender
• Edging Women Out: Victorian Novelists, Publishers and Social Change, Gaye Tuchman
• Women’s Reading in Britain, 1750-1835, Jacqueline Pearson
• Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition Within a Tradition, Joanne Braxton
• Diaries and Journals of Literary Women from Fanny Burney to Virginia Woolf, Judy Simons
• Between Ourselves: Letters Between Mothers & Daughters, Karen Payne
• How to Suppress Women’s Writing, Joanna Russ
• Chloe plus Olivia : an anthology of lesbian literature from the 17th century to the present, Lillian Faderman
• Reading Women’s Worlds from Christine de Pizan to Doris Lessing: A Guide to Six Centuries of Women Writers Imagining Rooms of Their Own, Sharon L. Jansen
• The Hidden Writer, Alexandra Johnson
• Women in Chains: The Legacy of Slavery in Black Women’s Fiction, Venetria K. Patton
• Embodied Shame: Uncovering Female Shame in Contemporary Women’s Writings, J. Brooks Bouson
• The World Split Open: Four Centuries of Women Poets, ed. Louise Bernikow

History

• Fearless Wives and Frightened Shrews: The Construction of the Witch in Early Modern Germany, Sigrid Bauner
• Women, the Family and Peasant Revolution in China, Kay Ann Johnson
• A Quiet Revolution: The resurgence of the Veil in the Middle East and America, Leila Ahmed
• The Encyclopedia of Amazons: Women Warriors from Antiquity to the Modern Era, Jessica Salmonson
• Hearts And Minds: The Untold Story of the Great Pilgrimage and How Women Won the Vote, Jane Robinson
• Memoirs of Victorian Working-Class Women, Florence S. Boos
• Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights / Black Power Movement, Bettye Collier-Thomas
• Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times, Elizabeth Wayland Barber
• Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII, Karen Lindsey
• A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France, Caroline Moorehead
• ‘Criminals, Idiots, Women, and Minors’: Victorian Writing by Women on Women, Susan Hamilton
• The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy, Gerda Lerner
• Women’s Work: An Anthology of African-American Women’s Historical Writings from Antebellum America to the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp and Kathryn Lofton
• The Girl With 7 Names: A North Korean’s Defector Story, Hyeonseo Lee
• Seeing and Knowing: Women and Learning in Medieval Europe, Anneke Mulder-Bakker
• To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done For America – A History, Lillian Faderman,
• Women in the Holocaust: A Feminist History, Zoë Waxman
• The Undaunted Women of Nanking: The Wartime Diaries of Minnie Vautrin and Tsen Shui-fang, ed. Hua-ling Hu and Zhang Lian-hong
• Gentlemen and Amazons: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, 1861-1900, Cynthia Eller

Modern, Contemporary

• Women’s Lifeworlds: Women’s narratives on shaping their realities, ed. Edith Sizoo
• Writing Women’s Worlds: Bedouin Stories, Lila Abu-Lughod
• Femicide in Global Perspective, ed. Diana Russell
• Silenced No More: Voices of Comfort Women, S.J. Friedman
• Practicing Feminism in South Korea: The women’s movement against sexual violence, Kyungja Jung
• Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues, Catharine MacKinnon
• Women’s Voices from the Rainforest, Janet Townsend
• Women, Resistance and Revolution: A History of Women and Revolution in the Modern World, Sheila Rowbotham
• Dictionary of Women Worldwide: 25,000 Women through the Ages, ed. Anne Commire and Deborah Klezmer
• The Disappearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture, Bonnie J. Morris
• Contested Voices: Women Immigrants in Today’s World, Mariane Githens
• The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World, Nawal El Saadawi
• Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera, Alicia Gaspar de Alba
• Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism, Uma Narayan
• Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women, Martha Ackelsberg
• With All Our Strength: The Revolutionary Association of the Women in Afghanistan, Anne Brodsky
• Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China, Leta Hong Fincher

Religion, Spirituality, Myth

• Women and Mystical Experience in the Middle Ages, Frances Beer
• The Wisdom of the Beguines: The Forgotten Story of a Medieval Women’s Movement, Laura Swan
• Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, Leila Ahmed
• Wandering Women and Holy Matrons: Women as Pilgrims in the Later Middle Ages, Leigh Ann Craig
• Unspoken Worlds: Women’s Religious Lives, Nancy Auer Falk
• Women and Indigenous Religions, ed. Sylvia Marcos
• Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, Kathryn Joyce
• Beyond God the Father, Mary Daly
• Convent Chronicles: Women Writing About Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages, Anne Winston-Allen
• Immortality and Reincarnation: Wisdom from the Forbidden Journey, Alexandra David-Néel
• The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women’s Anthology, ed. Irena Klepfisz and Melanie Kaye Kantrowitz
• Women Living Zen: Japanese Soto Buddhist Nuns, Paula Kane Robinson Arai
• Spiders & Spinsters: Women and Mythology, Marta Weigle
• The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance, Elizabeth Wayland Barber
• The Female Mystic: Great Women Thinkers of the Middle Ages, Andrea Dickens

Science, Medicine

• Blazing the Trail: Essays by Leading Women in Science, ed. Emma Ideal & Rhiannon Meharchand
• Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, Margot Lee Shetterly
• Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor, Hali Felt
• Complexities: Women in Mathematics, Bettye Anne Case
• The Mercury 13: The True Story of Thirteen Women and the Dream of Space Flight, Martha Ackmann
• Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
• Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, Brenda Maddox
• The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science, Julie Des Jardins
• Women and Madness, Phyllis Chesler
• The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World, Shelley Emling (for a fictionalised version: Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures)
• Women in Science: Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century, Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie
• Feminism & Bioethics, Susan M. Wolf
• Chrysalis: Maria Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis, Kim Todd
• Lifting the Veil: The feminine face of science, Linda J. Shepherd
• The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women, Kate Moore
• Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind, Kathryn A. Neeley
• Pandora’s Breeches: Women, Science and Power in the Enlightenment, Patricia Fara

Economics, Politics

• Women and Economics, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• The Political Economy of Violence against Women, Jacqui True
• Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Economics, Drucilla Barker (also her Liberating Economics: Feminist Perspectives on Families, Work, and Globalization)
• Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women’s Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World, Hester Eisenstein
• The Poverty of Life-Affirming Work: Motherwork, Education, and Social Change, Mechthild U. Hart
• Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, Cynthia Enloe
• Visionary Women: How Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Jane Goodall, and Alice Waters Changed Our World, Andrea Barnet
• Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism, Melissa W. Wright
• Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner?: A Story of Women and Economics, Katrine Marçal
• The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’S Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience, Kirstin Downey
• If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics, Marilyn Waring (also her Counting For Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth)
• Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, Silvia Federici

A lot of the books that aren’t available on OpenLibrary can be found here, if you have no morals and don’t mind piracy.