social science / women's studies

In 2009, award-winning journalist Rebecca Traister started All the Single Ladies about the twenty-first century phenomenon of the American single woman. It was the year the proportion of American women who were married dropped below fifty percent; and the median age of first marriages, which had remained between twenty and twenty-two years old for nearly a century (1890?1980), had risen dramatically to twenty-seven. But over the course of her vast research and more than a hundred interviews with academics and social scientists and prominent single women, Traister discovered a startling truth: the phenomenon of the single woman in America is not a new one. And historically, when women were given options beyond early heterosexual marriage, the results were massive social change?temperance, abolition, secondary education, and more. Today, only twenty percent of Americans are married by age twenty-nine, compared to nearly sixty percent in 1960.

"An assessment of the pros and cons of delayed motherhood. Through in-depth reporting and her own experience, Tanya Selvaratnam urges more widespread education and open discussion about delayed motherhood in the hope that long-lasting solutions can take effect. The result is a book of information that will enable women to make smarter choices about their reproductive futures and to strike a more realistic balance between science, society and personal goals"--Provided by publisher.

Explores the history of hair removal in America, and discusses the social issues and movements associated with body hair.

"For more than a decade, Katherine Zoepf has lived in or traveled throughout the Arab world, reporting on the lives of women, whose role in the region has never been more in flux. Only a generation ago, female adolescence as we know it in the West did not exist in the Middle East. There were only children and married women. Today, young Arab women outnumber men in universities, and a few are beginning to face down religious and social tradition in order to live independently, to delay marriage, and to pursue professional goals. Hundreds of thousands of devout girls and women are attending Qur'anic schools--and using the training to argue for greater rights and freedoms from an Islamic perspective."--Provided by publisher.

A collection of sexual-assault survivor stories that will connect with students. Every day more survivors come forward and others choose not to. More than 30 experiences of trauma, healing, and everyday activism, representing a diversity of races, economic and family backgrounds, gender identities, immigration statuses, interests, capacities and loves are revealed in this book. More than 1 in 5 women and 5 percent of men are sexually assaulted at college, a shocking status quo that might have stayed largely hidden and unaddressed but for the two authors. In 2013, Annie E. Clark and Andrea L. Pino, then 23 and 20, building on the work of earlier activists, outed themselves as assault survivors and filed a federal complaint against the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) for mishandling such crimes. Within a month, the U.S. government began to investigate UNC. Within a year, dozens of colleges were under federal investigation. But Clark and Pino rightly see themselves as two among many. Students from every kind of college and university--large and small, public and private, highly selective and less so--are sounding alarms and staking claims to justice by filing complaints, by pressing charges, and by simply living beyond the effects of assault and the betrayals of their schools.

"A passionate manifesto decrying misogyny in the Arab world, by an Egyptian American journalist and activist When the Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy published an article in Foreign Policy magazine in 2012 titled "Why Do They Hate Us?" it provoked a firestorm of controversy. The response it generated, with more than four thousand posts on the website, broke all records for the magazine, prompted dozens of follow-up interviews on radio and television, and made it clear that misogyny in the Arab world is an explosive issue, one that engages and often enrages the public. In Headscarves and Hymens, Eltahawy takes her argument further. Drawing on her years as a campaigner and commentator on women's issues in the Middle East, she explains that since the Arab Spring began, women in the Arab world have had two revolutions to undertake: one fought with men against oppressive regimes, and another fought against an entire political and economic system that treats women in countries from Yemen and Saudi Arabia to Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya as second-class citizens. Eltahawy has traveled across the Middle East and North Africa, meeting with women and listening to their stories. Her book is a plea for outrage and action on their behalf, confronting the "toxic mix of culture and religion that few seem willing or able to disentangle lest they blaspheme or offend." A manifesto motivated by hope and fury in equal measure, Headscarves and Hymens is as illuminating as it is incendiary"--.

Examines the shortage of women working in the fields of hard sciences, mathematics, engineering, and computer science.

Examines the roles women played in Germany and other countries for Hitler, before and during World War II.