International Women’s Day is marked on 8th March every year to celebrate the achievements of women and to raise awareness of equality issues and gender parity.

Here at Jesmond Library we have many books which highlight the role of women through the ages and celebrate their lives.

Here are just some of those available to be borrowed through our Click & Collect service. We are open every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday between 2-4 pm.

Angels of the North: Notable Women of the North East

“Angels of the North highlights forty women who are either from the North-East – or have strong connections to it. Some of these women are household names whereas others have significant achievements to their credit but are in danger of being forgotten. All of them are women to be proud of. The forty women cover many fields – the arts, politics, science, women’s rights, business and sheer heroism. The book focuses on the successes, achievements and ambitions of these women, noting collaborations, friendships and common goals. It also underlines that north east women were the pioneers in many of these fields.”

Bloody Brilliant Women: The Pioneers, Revolutionaries and Geniuses Your History Teacher Forgot to Mention

“A fresh, opinionated history of all the brilliant women you should have learned about in school but didn’t.

While a few of the women in this book are now household names, many have faded into oblivion, their personal and collective achievements mere footnotes in history. We know of Emmeline Pankhurst, Vera Brittain, Marie Stopes and Beatrice Webb. But who remembers engineer and motorbike racer Beatrice Shilling, whose ingenious device for the Spitfires’ Rolls-Royce Merlin fixed an often-fatal flaw, allowing the RAF’s planes to beat the German in the Battle of Britain? Or Dorothy Lawrence, the journalist who achieved her ambition to become a WW1 correspondent by pretending to be a man? And developmental biologist Anne McLaren, whose work in genetics paved the way for in vitro fertilisation?”

A History of Britain in 21 Women: A Personal Selection

“They were famous queens, unrecognised visionaries, great artists and trailblazing politicians. They all pushed back boundaries and revolutionised our world. Jenni Murray presents the history of Britain as you’ve never seen it before, through the lives of twenty-one women who refused to succumb to the established laws of society, whose lives embodied hope and change, and who still have the power to inspire us today.”

Rise Up Women! The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes

“Marking the centenary of female suffrage, this definitive history charts women’s fight for the vote through the lives of those who took part, in a timely celebration of an extraordinary struggle”

How Was It For You?: Women, Sex, Love and Power in the 1960s 

“This is a moving, shocking book about tearing up the world and starting again. It’s about peace, love, psychedelia and strange pleasures, but it is also about misogyny, violation and discrimination – half a century before feminism rebranded.”

Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men 

“In a world largely built for and by men, we are systematically ignoring half the population. It exposes the gender data gap – a gap in our knowledge that is at the root of perpetual, systemic discrimination against women, and that has created a pervasive but invisible bias with a profound effect on women’s lives”