Showing titles in Gender Studies

Take a spiritual pilgrimage into the rich, fertile soil of the divine feminine. For centuries, a hidden current has run through the world's wisdom traditions, a dark, positive, feminine energy represented by such striking symbols as the Tibetan Buddhist Tara, the Catholic Black Madonna, and the Hindu Kali. Now award-winning author and researcher China Galland takes you around the world to encounter the most powerful manifestations of "fierce compassion."

The panic years can hit at any time but they are most commonly triggered somewhere between the ages of twenty-five and forty. During this time, every decision a woman makes - from postcode to partner, friends to family, work to weekends - will be impacted by the urgency of the one decision with a deadline, the one decision that is impossible to take back: whether or not to have a baby. But how to stay sane in such a maddening time? How to understand who you are and what you might want from life? How to know if you're making the right decisions?

Extraordinary women have held positions of power throughout history. But, aside from the select few, why do we not hear about them? The middle ages are seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, Saints and Kings: a patriarchal society that oppressed and excluded women. But by digging a little deeper into the truth, drawing on evidence from all disciplines, we can see that the 'dark' ages were anything but. BBC historian Janina Ramirez has uncovered countless influential women's names struck out of historical records, with the word femina annotated beside them.

Boys are falling behind at school and college because the educational system is structed in ways that put them at a disadvantage. Men are struggling in the labour market because of an economic shift away from traditionally male jobs. And fathers are dislocated because the cultural role of family provider has been hollowed out. The male malaise is not the result of a mass psychological breakdown, but of deep structural challenges. Structural challenges require structural solutions, and this is what Richard V. Reeves proposes in Of Boys and Men.

Using the #JustBeKind trend of the 2020s as a starting point, (Un)kind explores how traditional beliefs about women's 'kind' nature have been repackaged for an age that remains dependent - socially, politically, economically - on female self-sacrifice while finding the concept outdated and essentialist. Looking at the various guises under which kindness culture is sold to women and girls - from play to self-help, social justice activism to empowerment - Victoria Smith argues that the pressure on women and girls has not decreased, but instead been incorporated into the 'work' of feminism.

Everyone needs to love and be loved - even men. But to know love, men must be able to look at the ways that patriarchal culture keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their feelings, from loving. In The Will to Change, bell hooks gets to the heart of the matter and shows men how to express the emotions that are a fundamental part of who they are - whatever their age, marital status, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.

Did you know that up to 90% of women experience menstrual abnormalities or pelvic problems in their lifetime? Yet these issues are overwhelmingly misunderstood, misdiagnosed, or dismissed. At a turbulent time when global health, reproductive, and human rights are under siege, Dr Tang is determined to revolutionise how gynaecologic health and pelvic pain are treated by the medical community. This book will be part of the fight for the healthcare all people with uteruses deserve - healthcare that is intersectional, gender-affirming, validating and hopeful.

In 2021, Australia saw rage and revelation as #MeToo powered an insurgency against sexism and sexual violence. From once isolated survivors to political staffers, women everywhere were refusing to keep men’s secrets. In this electrifying essay, Jess Hill traces the conditions that gave birth to #MeToo and tells the stories of women who – often at great personal cost – found themselves at the centre of this movement. Hill exposes the networks of backlash against them – in government, media, schools and in our national psyche.

When Gina Rushton admitted she had little time left to make the decision for herself, the magnitude of the choice overwhelmed her. Her search for her own 'yes' or 'no' only uncovered more questions to be answered. How do we clearly consider creating a new life on a planet facing catastrophic climate change? How do we reassess the gender roles we have been assigned? How do we balance ascending careers with declining fertility? How do we know if we've found the right co-parent, or if we want to go it alone, or if we don't want to do it at all?

A sacred priestess of the ancient Womb Rites, Mary Magdalene was at the center of a great and enduring Mystery tradition, one that touched on a stream of perennial spiritual wisdom as old as humanity. Worshipped as the human embodiment of the Goddess, the earthly Sophia, her womb was the spiritual luminatrix that anointed and empowered Jesus, transforming him into the Christ. As a priestess of the Goddess, Mary Magdalene knew how to embody the light and the dark, how to harness the magic potency of sacred sexual energy, and how to cleanse, awaken, and resurrect the soul.

Emily Ratajkowski is an acclaimed model and actress, an engaged political progressive, a formidable entrepreneur, a global social media phenomenon and, now, a writer. Rocketing to world fame at age 21, Ratajkowski sparked both praise and furor with the provocative display of her body as an unapologetic statement of feminist empowerment. My Body is a profoundly personal exploration of feminism, sexuality and power, of men's treatment of women and women's rationalizations for accepting that treatment.

What if you could live your life in partnership with divinity, using your intuition as your guide? According to Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., and Caroline Myss - such a life is possible. In fact, it is the life that mystics have chosen throughout history, and only one thing is required: the willingness to completely surrender to divine instruction. Now Caroline Myss and Dr. Estes - two of the country's leading intuitives and bestselling authors - are together for the first time on audio with Intuition and the Mystical Life.

In the first-ever history of the world's female buccaneers, Pirate Women: the Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas tells the story of women, both real and legendary, who through the ages sailed alongside - and sometimes in command of - their male counterparts. These women came from all walks of life but had one thing in common: a desire for freedom.

The bestselling classic that redefined our view of the relationship between beauty and female identity. In today's world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women's movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife.

In this ground-breaking history Elinor Cleghorn unpacks the roots of the perpetual misunderstanding, mystification and misdiagnosis of women's bodies, illness and pain. From the 'wandering womb' of ancient Greece to today's shifting understanding of hormones, menstruation and menopause, Unwell Women is the revolutionary story of women who have suffered, challenged and rewritten medical misogyny. Drawing on Elinor's own experience as an unwell woman, this is a powerful and timely exposé of the medical world and woman's place within it.

In this blazing, razor-sharp takedown of popular culture in the twenty-first century, Girl on Girl turns 90s and 00s nostalgia on its head, and shows how the media of that era repackaged the feminist movement as a containable, commodifiable (and hugely successful) product: 'Girl Power'. From the Spice Girls to the Kardashians, to #GirlBoss and OnlyFans, Pulitzer Prize-finalist Sophie Gilbert illustrates how the cultural forces of the last few decades have systematically shaped - and warped - women's relationships with themselves and other women.

Deborah Frances-White's smash hit podcast The Guilty Feminist is about being a force for change without being perfect: she's done her learning in public over the past ten years. In private, people often confide in her that they're frightened to ask questions about controversial topics. In her new book, she takes this out into the open, presenting presents six conversations that are scary to have - including problematic historical figures, gender, cancel culture and free speech.

Your feminine majesty has the power to heal almost everything in your entire life–and this book will teach you how. When you heal your feminine energy, everything else in your life falls into place.

The brilliant and hugely influential book by the winner of the 2017 Royal Society Insight Investment Science Books Prize. Gender inequalities are increasingly defended by citing hard-wired differences between the male and female brain. That’s why, we’re told, there are so few women in science, so few men in the laundry room - different brains are just suited to different things.

We humans have an extraordinary capacity for compassion—much of it in response to the atrocities we inflict on the planet, its animals, and each other. The popular explanation for this paradox is that we evolved as carnivorous “killer apes,” who gradually curbed our lust for violence (with frequent exceptions) by implementing humane social norms. This explanation is so well worn, especially in the American psyche, that it epitomizes cliché. So, we could be forgiven for believing it, when nearly every word is fiction.