Free summaries
Gender & Sexuality Studies — page 3
136 public-domain gender & sexuality studies books, summarised. Page 3 of 3.
Concerning Women
Suzanne La Follette
Social taboos and legal mechanisms have long bound women into a distinct, subjected class, reducing their individual autonomy to serving male-dominated institutions.
Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers
Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew
The moral integrity of colonial governance stands exposed when the systems designed to protect the vulnerable instead codify their exploitation. This account illuminates the dark intersection of state-sanctioned vice and the trade in human lives.
Women of the Romance Countries (Illustrated): Woman: In all ages and in all countries Vol. 6 (of 10)
John R. (John Robert) Effinger
The influence of women throughout history remains an elusive and subtle force, shaping the destinies of nations from the shadows of royal courts to the forefront of artistic and religious movements.
Working Women of Japan
Sidney Lewis Gulick
A firsthand account of Japanese women navigating the harsh realities of a rapidly industrializing society, this 1915 study details the struggles of laborers, domestic servants, and factory workers.
Journalism for Women: A Practical Guide
Arnold Bennett
To succeed in the demanding world of Fleet Street, a writer must master the mechanics of the trade and shed the amateurish habits that hinder professional growth.
Lawn Tennis for Ladies
Mrs. Lambert Chambers
The court is a theater of character, where the architecture of a well-placed drive and the quiet resilience of a steady mind determine victory more than raw, unbridled force. Within these pages, the discipline of the game reveals its capacity to shape the spirit.
The Trade Union Woman
Alice Henry
The struggle for fair labor conditions is a story of human dignity, where the quiet, persistent organization of working women transforms factories from sites of exploitation into bastions of solidarity.
A Problem in Modern Ethics: Being an Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Sexual Inversion, Addressed Especially to Medical Psychologists and Jurists
John Addington Symonds
An early, courageous effort to reframe human identity, this treatise moves beyond ancient prejudice and modern pathology to argue for the basic dignity of same-sex desire.
Early Double Monasteries: A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914
Constance Stoney
This academic inquiry illuminates the historically overlooked, collaborative structures of early Christian monasticism, where men and women maintained separate but interdependent communities under unified leadership.
The Future of the Women's Movement
Helena M. (Helena Maria) Swanwick
The struggle for equality is not merely a political grievance but a necessary evolution toward a more humane and cooperative society. This work offers a clear-eyed vision of how women’s liberation serves the advancement of all.
The Galaxy, May, 1877: Vol. XXIII.—May, 1877.—No. 5
Various
This vibrant collection of essays, reviews, and narrative sketches captures the intellectual pulse and social anxieties of 1877 through the eyes of refined, observant travelers and critics.
Work for Women
George J. Manson
Finding meaningful employment in the late nineteenth century required navigating a complex landscape of social barriers, gendered expectations, and limited training opportunities. This practical manual offers a pragmatic, unsentimental guide to the trades and professions available to women during a time of…
An Outline of Sexual Morality
Kenneth Ingram
This inquiry into human conduct challenges the prevailing prudery of the early twentieth century, arguing that morality must be rooted in love rather than the fear of physical expression or the demands of the state.
The Woman Movement
Ellen Key
The fight for legal and social equality is not merely a struggle for individual rights, but a necessary evolution toward a more complete and harmonious human existence for both men and women.
Woman: Man's Equal
Thomas Webster
A bold call for social transformation, this nineteenth-century manifesto argues that women possess an equal capacity to men, limited only by the arbitrary barriers of history, law, and custom.
Family Limitation
Margaret Sanger
The path to bodily autonomy begins with the courage to seek knowledge, moving beyond silence and stigma toward the practical mastery of one’s own health and future.
What Every Girl Should Know
Margaret Sanger
This foundational work provides a candid, systematic guide to female biology and sexual health, arguing that knowledge is the essential antidote to the dangers of ignorance and social silence.
The Making of a Trade School
Mary Schenck Woolman
Fourteen-year-old girls in early twentieth-century New York enter high-speed factories unprepared, earning micro-wages without any path toward advance. A pioneering trade school steps into that breach to reshape industrial education for young women.
Woman free
Ellis Ethelmer
A sweeping nineteenth-century poetic argument charts humanity's journey from primeval tyranny to an enlightened future of total equality, framed by scientific progress and moral law.
Sex and Common-Sense
A. Maude (Agnes Maude) Royden
This work invites readers to strip away the veils of Victorian prudery and fear, arguing that sex is a noble, creative force of nature. It serves as a compassionate, rational bridge between traditional Christian morality and the emerging psychological understandings of the early 20th century.
The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage
Almroth Wright
This treatise serves as a polemical rejection of the woman suffrage movement, arguing that the desire for the vote is a product of resentment rather than a legitimate claim to natural rights.
The Sayings of Mrs. Solomon: being the confessions of the seven hundredth wife as revealed to Helen Rowland
Helen Rowland
Marriage is a game of patience, persuasion, and profound absurdity, where the only way to survive is to stop taking the players—especially the men—quite so seriously.
A Treatise on the Art of Midwifery: Setting Forth Various Abuses Therein, Especially as to the Practice With Instruments: the Whole Serving to Put All Rational Inquirers in a Fair Way of Very Safely Forming Their Own Judgement Upon the Question; Which It Is Best to Employ, in Cases of Pregnancy and Lying-in, a Man-midwife
Elizabeth Nihell
A passionate defense of traditional midwifery, this text challenges the rising medical authority of the eighteenth-century "man-midwife" and the dangerous, unnecessary use of surgical instruments during childbirth.
The Origin, Tendencies and Principles of Government: A review of the rise and fall of nations from early historic time to the present
Victoria C. (Victoria Claflin) Woodhull
A bold vision for the future of the United States, this work challenges the corruption of nineteenth-century politics by demanding radical equality and the inclusion of women in the highest offices of government.
Feminism and Sex-Extinction
Arabella Kenealy
A fierce anti-feminist tract from 1920 argues that women competing with men threatens biological evolution and risks driving the human species toward extinction.
Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States,: 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, and January 25, 1887
Various
A handful of 1880s politicians and female activists face off in the Senate to debate whether American women deserve the right to vote.
The thread of life
Infanta of Spain Eulalia
A royal voice breaks from the constraints of the Spanish court to advocate for personal independence, rational morality, and the quiet dignity of a life lived without the burden of prejudice.
Women in the Printing Trades: A Sociological Study
Unknown
An exhaustive investigation into Victorian industrial life reveals how women in the British printing and binding trades are kept in low-paying, repetitive roles by trade union restrictions, social expectations, and employer calculations.
Birth control laws
Mary Ware Dennett
The movement to modernize American law often clashes with the lingering fears of the past. This examination reveals why outdated statutes regarding reproductive information remain a persistent, harmful shadow over personal liberty.
British freewomen
C. C. (Charlotte Carmichael) Stopes
English legal tradition did not always exclude women from public authority; over centuries of statute and custom, their rights were systematically eroded until modern law codified their subjection.
Marriage as a Trade
Cicely Hamilton
A sharp, pragmatic examination of women's primary historic vocation exposes the physical, moral, and intellectual tolls of enforced financial dependency upon men.
The long road of woman's memory
Jane Addams
A thoughtful reflection on how memory shapes the lives of women, this collection explores how the stories we tell ourselves—and the myths we inherit—help us navigate grief, social injustice, and the pressures of modern life.
The history of the condition of women, in various ages and nations (vol. 2 of 2)
Lydia Maria Child
Across centuries and continents, the legal, spiritual, and social status of women has shifted between reverence, severe subjugation, and gradual emancipation.
Hints to Husbands: A Revelation of the Man-Midwife's Mysteries
George Morant
A fervent polemic from 1857, this work serves as an urgent plea for husbands to reclaim the sanctity of the domestic sphere by rejecting the rising, and in the author’s view, profoundly indecent, professionalization of midwifery.
Lighted to Lighten: the Hope of India: A Study of Conditions among Women in India
Alice B. (Alice Boucher) Van Doren
A record of the pioneering efforts to bring Western-style education to the women of India, this text highlights the profound transition from traditional domestic confinement to the emergence of a new class of female leadership. It serves as an earnest, period-specific document detailing the pedagogical and social…
The Bible and Polygamy: Does the Bible Sanction Polygamy?
John Philip Newman
This transcript captures a rare, high-stakes public collision between 19th-century American religious traditions, documenting a formal debate on whether the Bible serves as a legal foundation for polygamous marriage.
Riding for Ladies
W. A. (William Alexander) Kerr
HOOK Master the art of the saddle with this expert guide to nineteenth-century horsemanship, blending technical instruction with a spirited debate on the evolving customs of the era.
Thy Name Is Woman
Bryce Walton
Bound by gravity and abandoned by women who fled to Mars, Earth’s remaining men face extinction—until one soldier undertakes a harrowing bio-chemical mutation to cross the void and uncover their secret.
A Domestic Problem
Abby Morton Diaz
To achieve mental and moral growth, a woman needs time to think, read, and rest; yet the unending drudgery of household labor relentlessly consumes her days. Abby Morton Diaz confronts this structural paradox directly, offering a pragmatic blueprint for domestic reform.
Women in white raiment
John Lemley
A woman’s worth in the eyes of God is neither an invention of modern social progress nor a recent compromise with culture.