Who should I be reading?
I sorted my bookshelf and noticed a pattern. Where are the women in leadership?
“What genius, what integrity it must have required in the face of all that criticism, in the midst of that purely patriarchal society, to hold fast to the thing as they saw it without shrinking.”
—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929)
Virginia Woolf wrote this nearly a hundred years ago, referring to female writers who had published fifty to one hundred years before that.
She was talking about women who saw something true and said it plainly, even when their perspective was unfamiliar—or unwelcome.
What strikes me is how true this still is—and how it shapes the perspectives on leadership that end up on our shelves.
I find it very hard to write about what I see without shrinking. Without hedging. Without wondering if my experience is too specific, too female, too white, too much.
The stacks
Over winter break, I got to organizing. My favorite pastime.
I’d gotten some new books for Christmas, and that meant I needed to make room. I’d been wanting to sort my books into themed stacks anyway—it makes them so much easier to recommend when someone asks, “Where should I start on change leadership?” or “Do you have anything on mid-life transitions?”
So I made a big mess. Books covered my office floor, spread across the living room, climbed onto my bed. By the time I was done, I had about twenty stacks to keep and several bags to give away.
And I noticed something.
What my shelves revealed
When I had many books on a topic, I leaned toward keeping the ones written by women.
But when I looked closer, the pattern wasn’t even. My stacks on women’s health, parenting, boundaries, and equal partnership were full of female voices. Authors like Tricia Hersey, Natalie Lue, Nedra Glover Tawwab, Caroline Criado Perez, Kate Mangino, Emily Oster, Becky Kennedy, Eve Rodsky.
My stacks on creativity, leadership, business, and time management? Heavily male.
This is entirely unscientific. It’s just my bookshelf. But it made me wonder: where are the women writing about leadership and time and creativity—from their own experience, without shrinking?
They exist. I know they do. Laura Vanderkam, Priya Parker, Donna Hicks, Brené Brown. But they haven’t made it onto my shelves in the same numbers.
Room for our voices
To me, this gap means something. It means there’s still room—so much room—for mothers in leadership to write about our experiences in ways that hold fast to our own truths.
Please help me. Who should I be reading? Who’s on your shelf?
I’m sharing some of my stacks below. Which ones call to you?
🕊️
SAM
p.s. I’m hatching a new idea. Are you a mother working in an independent school? I’m thinking about starting a private group just for us—a space to share the unique challenges and opportunities of leading in this particular world. If you’d be interested in helping me brainstorm, please reach out. I’d love to hear from you.
For fun, fluffy reading that keeps women in leadership in mind, I recommend anything written by Tamora Pierce. Her books are YA fantasy featuring (drumroll) women in leadership! And women working to be leaders in traditionally male spaces (knights, dragons, etc). They’re for kids, but the adult characters are really well-rounded role models and they’re full of great examples of how people can support each other.
Love the re-org and affinity grouping, Sarah! What would you say are the category or group names that you used? I see some familiar and so many new, intriguing titles. Thank you!