A History of Women in 101 Objects

What are the objects that define womanhood? Which pieces describe life as a woman through the ages? And how can you find the story of a single sex over thousands of years?

Throughout human civilisation, women have been silenced, ignored, shamed, traded, exploited, and abused. Objects in this book - a set of thumbscrews, a bronze statuette of Athena, or the embroidered sack passed down from an enslaved mother to her child - speak of the cruelty and suffering women have experienced at the hands of the world.

And yet, many more objects speak of other ideas: of the courage, humour, and power of women. From a healed human femur 30,000 years ago and Sappho's ancient love poetry, to a French abortion manifesto and a bunch of hair from the Iranian women's rebellion, via 16th-century sex toys, a very subversive interwar self-help book, and George Sand's right arm, this book explores the ways women have found strength in the spaces they have been placed, and the freedom they have seized through objects: the salon couch, the telephone, the typewriter, and the bicycle.

In this fascinating, moving and amusing book, 101 objects are brought together to celebrate platonic love, sexual freedom and romantic friendship between women, as well as the political power of pockets, the professional computers of the 1800s, and the Resistance heroines throughout history, and show how women have always found a way not just to survive, but to carve their own paths through the world.