How, where, and why do women's rights advance? This book rigorously examines the implications of competing explanations and shows that conventional wisdom is often incomplete or incorrect. It argues, instead, that advances in core rights are key to improving gender equality across the globe.

A book about being a woman, raising children, succeeding in a leadership role, and living a full life, this work debunks the seven most commonly held misconceptions about women and their professional careers. Penned by an award-winning journalist, this book discusses topics such as the gender pay gap, motherhood and a career, meritocracies in the workplace, and the use of quotas.

American women, in contrast to their European counterparts, have long engaged with and critiqued the myths of antiquity. American Women and Classical Myths is a collection of essays exploring the paradoxical attitudes that women in the U.S. have exhibited over a span of more than two centuries. Contributors address two broad topics. They examine the attempts of several influential American women, including Margaret Fuller, Edith Hamilton and Hilda Doolittle, to interpret myth for an audience that distrusted it. In addition, they show how American women have reinterpreted myths about women such as Antigone, Penelope, or the Amazons to create identities appropriate to women in the New World.

Two conventional wisdoms dominate debates about why women's rights advance in some places but not others. While culture and religion are understood to be the primary barriers to gender equality, efforts by international institutions and women's groups to change social norms are often seen as the most effective way to reduce discrimination. This book introduces a third, often overlooked explanation - the core rights framework - to account for how, where, and why women's rights advance. It argues that female labor force participation and education serve as building blocks, or core rights, for the advancement of other women's rights. Cultivating core rights is believed to spur group consciousness, ease collective action problems, and render women in a politically relevant group, thereby increasing the prospects that women's rights are represented in the polity. In examining the advancement of women's rights across four major areas - political, nationality, reproductive, and property rights - this book shows that the conventional wisdom about the role of international norms and culture is usually overstated and often incomplete. It also presents systematic evidence evaluating the effectiveness of different prescriptions for improving women's lives across a broad range of rights.

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. It's the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society's impossible definition of "the flawless beauty."

Muslim women of all ages, economic status, educational backgrounds, sexual orientations, and from different parts of historically Muslim countries suffer the kinds of atrocities that violate common understandings of human rights and are normally denounced as criminal or pathological, yet these actions are sustained because they uphold some religious doctrine or some custom blessed by local traditions. Ironically, while instances of abuse meted out to women and even female children are routine, scholarship about Muslim women in the post 9/11 era has rarely focused attention on them, preferring to speak of women’s agency and resistance. Too few scholars are willing to tell the complicated, and at times harrowing, stories of Muslim women's lives. Women and Islam: Myths, Apologies, and the Limits of Feminist Critique radically rethinks the celebratory discourse constructed around Muslim women’s resistance. It shows instead the limits of such resistance and the restricted agency given women within Islamic societies. The book does not center on a single historical period. Rather, it is organized as a response to five questions that have been central to upholding the 'resistance discourse': What is the impact of the myth of al-Andalus on a feminist critique? What is the feminist utility of Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism? Is Islam compatible with a feminist agenda? To what extent can Islamic institutions, such as the veil, be liberating for women? Will the current Arab uprisings yield significant change for Muslim women? Through examination of these core questions, Bouachrine calls for a shift in the paradigm of discourse about feminism in the Muslim world.

"Get inspired with 50 fascinating stories of powerful female figures from mythologies around the world. From heroines and deities to leaders and mythical creatures, this collection explores figures of myth who can inspire modern readers with their ability to shape our culture with the stories of their power, wisdom, compassion, and cunning. Featured characters include: Atalanta (Greek heroine and huntress who killed the Caledonia Boar and joined the Argonauts); Sky-Woman (the first woman in Iroquois myth who fell through a hole in the sky and into our world); Clídna (Queen of the Banshees in Irish legend); and La Llorona (a ghostly woman in Mexican folklore who wanders the waterfront). Celebrate these game-changing, attention-worthy female characters with this collection of engaging tales"--