Explore our Break The Bias Collections for Women’s Day

Celebrate Women’s Day with books and films that break the bias for Women’s Day 2022! March 8 is International Women’s Day (IWD), a global day of recognition that celebrates the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women and girls and calls for gender equality. 

This year’s theme of Break the Bias urges us to imagine a gender equal world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination and reminds us that collectively, we can Break the Bias and create that world.  

To commemorate this day, we’ve asked our U of G community through our social media channels to submit books authored by women that Break the Bias and vote on which ones to add to our collection. Once the vote is concluded, we'll purchase the winning items for our collections. 

Here are the titles that the U of G community voted to purchase for International Women's Day:

• Kim Ji-young, born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo 
  • This novel tells a story about an ordinary life of Kim Jiyoung, presenting the hardships and sexism that she and other Korean women experienced and how they responded. 
• Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by Adrienne Maree Brown 
  • Drawing on the Black feminist tradition, the contributors in this book explore the concept of pleasure activism, the politics of healing and happiness that explodes the myth that changing the world is just another form of work. 
• The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
  • This sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale picks up the story more than fifteen years after Offred stepped into the unknown, answering some of the questions readers have been asking for decades. 
• Beloved by Toni Morrison 
  • This innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past follows Sethe, who was born a slave and escaped to Ohio but is held captive by her memories 18 years later. 
• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer 
  • Kimmerer uses the dual lenses of botany and the teachings she’s learned as a Citizen of the Potawatomi Nation to show how to acknowledge and celebrate our reciprocal relationship with the world.  
• The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin 
  • This fantasy novel follows a woman who must hide her secret power and find her kidnapped daughter as the great red rift threatens to destroy their world. 
• Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay  
  • Roxane Gay uses her own emotional and psychological struggles to explore our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. 
• Home of the Floating Lily by Silmy Abdullah 
  • Caught between cultures, immigrant families from a Bengali neighbourhood in Toronto strive to navigate their home, relationships, and happiness. 
• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler 
  • In this post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel, Octavia E. Butler presents a commentary on climate change and social inequality through following a woman's quest for freedom. 
• She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan 
  • This fantasy novel re-imagines the rise to power of the Ming Dynasty's founding emperor, in which Zhu uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery and eventually claim his fate of greatness. 

We’ve also curated a selection of International Women’s Day Films collection in collaboration with the GenEQ Committee. This collection was initiated last year and we continue to build on the collection by adding new titles. Browse the International Women's Day Film collection. 

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