Here We Stand: Women Changing the World

by Helena Earnshaw (Editor), Angharad Penrhyn Jones (Editor)

A fascinating and unique anthology about contemporary women campaigners and how they were changed by the process of changing the world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Politics

325 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 2, 2014

Reviews

[cj · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book. Genuinely inspiring, diverse, accessible, moving. It's a mixture of interviews with and personal essays by women who've fought for change in all kinds of different contexts. Some of them are political activists in the usual sense, and some of them are artists, filmmakers, whistle-blowers. And the causes range from abuse in the care industry, corporate power, gendered violence, environmental degradation, disability rights, racism, militarism and nuclear weapons - it's actually a really amazing overview of a lot of the big social justice struggles of the last few decades.

The fact that the contributors are all women is easy to forget - the interviews don't belabour the 'you did all this AND you're a woman!' angle or try too hard to find some gender-related connective thread between all the stories, and this makes it, for me, gorgeously, subtly, provocatively feminist in a properly diverse, messy, complicated way. An awesome read: highly recommended.

[Chimene Bateman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a book club choice and I wasn't expecting to enjoy it much; I thought it would be too "worthy". But in fact it's an amazing collection of interviews and first-person stories by women who have managed to effect different kinds of social and political change in Britain and beyond. There is a powerful parallel between the way the individual women found their voices, by forging links with wider communities, and the way the book itself is structured, as a collection that brings together different women's stories to create a strong collective effect.

[Lily Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never expected a book about female activism to fill me with such positivity - I was fully expecting to spend the whole time feeling shameful and ignorant but honestly the diversity and passion of these women was so inspiring and comforting, especially to know that most of them think the same thing: you don’t have to be outlandish or do outrageously dangerous things to be an activist so long as what you’re doing is fuelled by wanting to make the world a better place.

[Rosamund E. Dickinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was interesting to read about the different women and their campaigns but I felt like a bio at the begining of each chapter would have helped with context. I would recommend though because I hadn't heard of some of these women and they had been involved in some truly fantastic work.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

The passion of both the activists and the editors really comes through. Like other reviewers, I do think that the contributor bios should have been included at the start of each entry rather than together at the end.

[Tanya · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars