Workable Sisterhood is an empirical look at sixteen HIV-positive women who have a history of drug use, conflict with the law, or a history of working in the sex trade. What makes their experience with the HIV/AIDS virus and their political participation different from their counterparts of people with HIV? Michele Tracy Berger argues that it is the influence of a phenomenon she labels "intersectional stigma," a complex process by which women of color, already experiencing race, class, and gender oppression, are also labeled, judged, and given inferior treatment because of their status as drug users, sex workers, and HIV-positive women. The work explores the barriers of stigma in relation to political participation, and demonstrates how stigma can be effectively challenged and redirected. The majority of the women in Berger's book are women of color, in particular African Americans and Latinas. The study elaborates the process by which these women have become conscious of their social position as HIV-positive and politically active as activists, advocates, or helpers. She builds a picture of community-based political participation that challenges popular, medical, and scholarly representations of "crack addicted prostitutes" and HIV-positive women as social problems or victims, rather than as agents of social change. Berger argues that the women's development of a political identity is directly related to a process called "life reconstruction." This process includes substance- abuse treatment, the recognition of gender as a salient factor in their lives, and the use of nontraditional political resources.

Most people may think of ranchers and cowboys as men. But although they are under-chronicled, ranch women work from dark to dark, keeping step with hired hands, brothers, fathers and husbands. They blaze trails through unforgiving scrub. They cook supper and feed bulls. At any given time, they wear the hats--and the gloves--of geologist, veterinarian, lawyer and mechanic. They are fierce and feminine and powerful. Photojournalist and writer Alyssa Banta spent over a year following more than a dozen Texas women through their grueling daily routines, from the messy confines of the working chute to the sprawling reaches of the back pasture. The result of this unprecedented access is an intimate portrait of the challenges and achievements of the ranch women of the Lone Star State, along with the land and livestock that sustain them.

Gender equity can't happen without racial equity. We need Shared Sisterhood. Bias persists in organizations and society. Despite efforts that have been made in the last few decades, gender and racioethnic equity still hasn’t been achieved. What's worse, Black, Indigenous, Asian, and Latina women are being held back more than their White counterparts. We need to change how we strive for equity. We must move beyond individual solutions toward collective action, where people from historically power-dominant and marginalized groups work together, so that all women experience the benefits of professional growth and equity. We need Shared Sisterhood, and anyone, regardless of gender, can join in. Professor Tina Opie first started Shared Sisterhood as a movement to drive gender and racial equity in organizations. Since then, she and professor Beth A. Livingston have worked together to spread the word to leaders across organizations, with thousands of followers joining the cause. In this book, they explain how to use vulnerability, trust, empathy, and risk-taking to build Shared Sisterhood and break down three key parts of the process: Dig into your own assumptions around racioethnicity, gender, and power Bridge the divide between women of all backgrounds through authentic relationships Advance all women across the organization and beyond Balancing a mix of history, research, and real-life examples—including the authors' own experiences—this book encourages everyone to join Shared Sisterhood and advance equity for all.

Descriptive studies of women in office have well documented the ways in which the gender and race of legislators affects policy preferences. However, descriptive studies of female legislators tend to treat identity as constant over time and context and so fail to account for the substantive work of legislators. As Sisters in the Statehouse shows, it is not enough to disaggregate "women" from "Blacks." While scholars have long advanced the notion that African American women as a group exhibit specificities informed by the intersection of race and gender that provide them with a unique worldview, it is necessary to further explore differences among Black women. This book addresses this gap by utilizing humanistic inquiry to examine the connection between descriptive and substantive representation in the case of Black women legislators. This link hinges on how such legislators see the effects of their own race-gender identity on their legislative work. By combining humanistic and social science techniques, including feminist life histories, elite interviews, and participant observation in conjunction with legislative case studies and bill sponsorship data, Nadia E. Brown presents a fuller description of how identity informs Black women state legislators' descriptive and substantive representation. Linking personal narratives to political behavior, Brown elicits the feminist life histories of African American women legislators to understand how their experiences with racism and sexism have influenced their legislative decision-making and policy preferences. Sisters in the Statehouse is a groundbreaking inquiry into how an intersectional approach can enhance our understanding of political representation.

Sisters in the Brotherhoods is an oral-history-based study of women who have, against considerable odds, broken the gender barrier to blue-collar employment in various trades in New York City beginning in the 1970s. It is a story of the fight against deeply ingrained cultural assumptions about what constitutes women's work, the middle-class bias of feminism, the daily grinding sexism of male co-workers, and the institutionalised discrimination of employers and unions. It is also the story of some gutsy women who, seeking the material rewards and personal satisfactions of skilled manual labour, have struggled to make a place for themselves among New York City's construction workers, stationary engineers, firefighters, electronic technicians, plumbers, and transit workers. Each story contributes to an important unifying theme: the way women confronted the enormous sexism embedded in union culture and developed new organisational forms to support their struggles, including and especially the United Tradeswomen.