The 89 best books on politics and society by women

No. 11 on this list. Three Guineas · Virginia Woolf · 1938

Three Guineas opens with a letter — one of three — asking Virginia Woolf to donate money to a society dedicated to preventing war. She has left it unanswered for three years. Her answer, when it comes, takes 180 pages and two additional letters to deliver, and it is not the answer the barrister expected. Woolf argues that men in professional life — lawyers, bishops, professors, politicians — have spent centuries constructing the institutions they now ask women to help defend. The same educational system that trained men to value hierarchy and pageantry over liberty, she shows, also produced the conditions for fascism. To give money to defend those institutions is to underwrite the system that built them. Her method is documentary: she quotes from men's biographies, from parliamentary debates, from newspaper reports of women barred from professions, from Sophocles. Each quotation is a piece of evidence. The three guineas — one to a women's college, one to a professional women's society, one to the anti-war fund — are dispensed on conditions that enact her argument rather than concede to convention. Published in 1938 as Europe moved toward war, Three Guineas is a work of controlled anger and elaborate rhetorical irony. Woolf performs deference with precision; every courtesy conceals a charge.

No. 12 on this list. The Bloody Chamber · Angela Carter · 1979

Taught in schools: OCR GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

The Bloody Chamber is among the most-taught works of feminist fiction in British and American university literature programs, appearing on A-level and undergraduate syllabi across the English-speaking world for over four decades. It anchors feminist fairy tale criticism as a field and appears on most 20th-century fiction retrospective lists. Its canonical standing exceeds Infinite Jest (78) in terms of institutional adoption.

No. 13 on this list. This Sex Which Is Not One · Luce Irigaray · 1977

A foundational text of French feminist philosophy and literary theory. Essential in feminist theory and continental philosophy courses.

No. 14 on this list. The Yellow Wall-Paper · Charlotte Perkins Gilman · 1892

It is a fixture of American literature and women's studies courses and widely anthologized. Its place sits just below the great canon, and the Open Library record lists it among open syllabus project works.

No. 15 on this list. Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation · Margaret Mead · 2001

Widely assigned in anthropology and gender-studies courses, and a standard case in debates over method. Its place is secured as much by the Freeman controversy as by the text.

No. 16 on this list. Secondhand Time · Svetlana Alexievich · 2013

Secondhand Time appears on syllabi in Eastern European studies, Russian history, and world literature courses at major universities, but has not achieved the broad canonical status of Soviet-era classics like Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. Its Nobel Prize pedigree (Alexievich won in 2015) has elevated its presence in academic reading lists, and it is available in dozens of languages. Within its genre of documentary prose, it is considered essential reading.

No. 17 on this list. The Warmth of Other Suns · Isabel Wilkerson · 2010

It is widely assigned in American history and African American studies courses and read as a modern classic of narrative history. A recent book, it has not yet reached the staple status of the older canon.

No. 18 on this list. Salvador · Joan Didion · 1983

Salvador is widely taught in journalism programs and American political nonfiction courses, and is considered alongside Slouching Towards Bethlehem as Didion's defining reportorial work. No formal syllabus data was returned in the data signals, but the book's inclusion in American literary and journalism curricula is broadly documented. It appears on numerous 'essential nonfiction' lists alongside works like The Executioner's Song and The Armies of the Night.

No. 19 on this list. The Custom of the Country · Edith Wharton · 1913

The Custom of the Country appears regularly on university syllabi in American literature, women studies, and social realism courses — though less ubiquitously than The Age of Innocence or The House of Mirth. It features in most critical surveys of the American novel and is routinely included in Wharton retrospectives. Its representation in secondary literature and university curricula places it in the upper tier of canonical American fiction without achieving the course-fixture status of her most-taught work.

No. 20 on this list. The Field of Life and Death · Xiao Hong · 1935

Standard in modern Chinese literature and Chinese women's writing courses, published by Indiana University Press in Goldblatt's translation.

No. 21 on this list. Cassandra · Christa Wolf · 1983

Cassandra is required reading in German literature curricula across European universities and is a standard text in courses on feminist rewritings of classical myth. The data signals return no syllabus figures, but Wolf's status as the defining literary voice of the GDR and her international recognition ensure the book appears on World Literature, Women's Writing, and Postwar European Fiction syllabi consistently. It is not a fixture of Anglophone undergraduate curricula in the way Beloved or The Great Gatsby is, placing it below 80 on canonical status.

No. 22 on this list. The Feminization of American Culture · Ann Douglas · 1977

The book is a standard text in American studies, women's studies and religious history courses. It is a landmark of 1970s cultural history, though it is not itself a literary classic.

No. 23 on this list. Reading Colonial Japan: Text, Context, and Critique · Michele M. Mason · 2012

A significant scholarly contribution to both Korean studies and colonial discourse studies; widely cited in both fields.

No. 24 on this list. Penelopiad · Margaret Atwood · 2005

The Penelopiad appears regularly on feminist literature syllabi, myth-retelling courses, and contemporary women's fiction reading lists, benefiting from its position in the Canongate Myths series and Atwood's towering reputation. It has not achieved the universal curricular penetration of Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, placing it in established rather than major canon territory.

No. 25 on this list. So Long a Letter · Mariama Bâ · 1979

Taught in schools: CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council

So Long a Letter is one of the most taught African novels in Western universities, appearing on syllabi across postcolonial literature, African studies, feminist theory, and world literature courses. Winner of the inaugural Noma Award for Publishing in Africa (1980), it has been translated into more than twenty languages and is routinely included on 'essential African literature' reading lists. Its Wikipedia article exists in over twenty language editions, reflecting its global recognition.

No. 26 on this list. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap · Stephanie Coontz · 1992

The Way We Never Were is widely assigned in undergraduate and graduate courses in American history, sociology, family studies, gender studies, and social policy. It appears on syllabi across U.S. universities as a standard text for courses on the American family, and its arguments have been incorporated into the general scholarly consensus on family history. While it does not occupy the 'great books' canon, it has become a canonical reference within its fields — the book critics and scholars cite when debunking family-decline narratives. Its presence in public discourse has been sustained across three decades.

No. 27 on this list. Wives and Daughters · Elizabeth Gaskell · 1866

Wives and Daughters is a fixture of Victorian literature curricula at universities worldwide, consistently ranked among the great English novels of the nineteenth century. Although the Open Syllabus database shows limited entries, the novel regularly appears on 'best Victorian novel' lists and in British literature survey courses. Martin Amis named it one of the supreme English novels; it is published in every major prestige edition including Penguin Classics, Oxford World's Classics, and Everyman's Library.

No. 28 on this list. Woman at Point Zero · Nawal El Saadawi · 1975

Firdaus sits on death row in a Cairo prison, waiting to be executed for the murder of a man. She has refused all appeals and refuses to see anyone — until she agrees to speak to a psychiatrist. What follows is her life told in her own voice: a childhood of poverty and violation in a Nile Delta village, an uncle who used her and married her off to an old man, escape to Cairo and the streets, a moment of grace with a woman named Sharifa, and then the long education of a woman who sold her body because every other option had already been sold without her consent. El Saadawi based this novel on a real woman she met while working as a prison psychiatrist. The result reads like testimony — spare, flat, ferocious. Firdaus does not ask for sympathy. She has arrived at a place beyond it. The killing is not a breakdown; it is the one act in her life that belonged entirely to her. The novel is short — under 150 pages — and moves fast, but its structure doubles back: what begins as a case study ends as a reversal, with the psychiatrist shaken and the condemned woman serene. It belongs to the same tradition as Toni Morrison and Frantz Fanon: the examination of what violence and power do to a self, written from inside that experience.

No. 29 on this list. The Story of Zahra · Hanan al-Shaykh · 1980

Major work of Lebanese and Arab women's literature. Widely taught.

No. 30 on this list. I Love Dick · Chris Kraus · 1997

Widely taught in courses on autofiction and feminist writing.