Shall we make a feminist reading list?

[MillicentF]

One book only. That made you a feminist, or explained your feminism or raised your conscieness (no prizes for guessing what generation I come from).

Mine is The Women’s Room, by Marilyn French. Very dated now, but still depressingly relevant.

If there are any anyone can recommend suitable for an 11 yr old that would be great....

I've not read many and it's not a feminist book as such but someone on here alerted us when kindle had "The war on women " going for 99p.

It's certainly a good one for people like me who know very little about any thing to highlight just what We are all up against

11 is tricky. There are some brilliant story books for younger ones about. Sometimes I think talking about whatever they are reading might be better than specific books.

Sorry, pressed send too soon. I’ll have a look and ask Dd what she remembers reading at that age.

Gone with the Wind. Just amazing.

Women who run with the wolves.

Worked my way through the Virago Press books in my local library when I was at school - would never have labelled myself a feminist but so many of the titles made a real impact.

Any recommendations for 9 and younger? My eldest is particularly perceptible to the 'boys can do this, girls can't crap' which I am constantly challenging.

Some of these might be good
www.scottishbooktrust.com/reading/book-lists/15-picture-books-that-challenge-gender-expectations-3-7

It's for 3 to 7 year olds, but I thnk 'Ninja red riding' and 'goodnight stories' books will still be good for a 9 year old.

This list of books for Bold Girls is great, lots of choice for all age groups - childrensbooksireland.ie/boldgirls/

loving the book lists for kids, thank you

Thanks for the suggestions, I did get her 'fantastically great women who changed the world', has a couple of pages each of Rosa Parks, Coco Chanel, Emmeline Pankhurst, Mary Seacole etc.

I am encouraging her to select one of those to dress up as next world book day rolls round!

steppemum Girls Will Be Girls by Emer O' Toole is an excellent choice for teenage girls - it's very much about coming of age as a woman in the modern, social media-soaked world.

And my personal recommendation (and sorry for banging on about this book yet again) would be Demonic Males by Richard Wrangham. It's a study of male violence in all the great apes (including humans), and it really opened my eyes to the scale of the problem. It's somewhat depressing, although it does have a fairly optimistic conclusion.

It's not strictly speaking a feminist book (though Wrangham's analyses are very pro-feminism), but others have recommended the classics in this thread, so I thought I'd chuck in a wild card.