Five Books on Feminism in Five Days of International Women's Day

Feminist! Feminism! gender Equality!

These are terms that we will be interacting with more frequently as we prepare to celebrate International Women's Day. How we read and interpret them is very variegated. On the one hand, some will be proactive about it, and, on the other hand, others will be reactionary about it. Often, it is from either lack of or wrong understanding of the meaning and the genealogy.

As a student of life, there is a reason why I am an ardent consumer of philosophy. Philosophy teaches and unsettles us by confronting us with what we already know. There’s an irony: it works by taking what we know from familiar and unquestioned settings and making it strange. Philosophy estranges us, not by providing us with new information but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing. It awakens the restlessness of reason. The risk is once the familiar turns strange, it is never quite the same again. Self-knowledge is like a lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be unthought or unknown.

It is on that basis that I have engrossed myself in feminist literature of late. I can assure you; it is never the same. 

In this five days of book commendation escapade, I will endeavour to highlight certain fundamental questions that different authors have attempted to provide regarding the status of gender equality and some of the issues that are kneecapping that process. 

What do women go through on their journey to the leadership apex? In Women and Leadership: Real Lives, Real Lessons, Julia Gillard (Former Prime Minister Australia) and Ngozi Okonjo-Laweala (Director WTO) explores these issues in what they frame as the eight hypotheses (read stereotypes). 

In its current form, can the market, left to its devices, provide solutions to the primacy of feminism- gender equality? Vicky Pryce attempts to explore this market phenomenon in her magnum opus, Women vs Capitalism: Why we cant have it all in a free market economy. 

Taken a notch higher, what are the effects of the capitalist market, as is, and pop culture on framing the feminist narrative and, by extension, the impact on the principles that underlies feminism social justice framework? Andi Zeisler asks in her thought-provoking piece We Were Feminists Once: From a riot grrrrl to covergirl, the buying ad selling of a political movement. 

What is culture’s role and, by extension, religion in shaping gender roles in the community? Ayan Hirsi’s Infidel and The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shonayen should room in some facts. 

What and how did the journey to women suffrage look like from a global chronological account? Jad Adams narrates in the Women and the Vote: World History. 

To cap it all, the fundamental questions we are raising around gender equality are, in their organic nature, questions of justice both in practical and principle sense. Hence, as rational beings, if we can have that as a common understanding, we will be able to adequately provide solutions to gender equality issues as a matter of urgency. But we also know that, for aeons, the term justice has been a subject of debate in addressing social issues. What are some of these books or resources that we can turn to provide answers to justice questions around feminism?

Shall We.