Malala Yousafzai. Photo: Southbank Centre

THE theme of this year’s Inter­national Women’s Day (IWD) is #ChooseToChallenge. Celebrate with Caitlin Moran’s More Than A Woman (Ebury), the sequel to her best-selling How To Be a Woman, “a guide to growing older and a manifesto for change”. Or treat yourself to a Virago Modern classic whose authors range from Angela Carter to Rumer Godden and Janet Frame to Rebecca West. For children, Islington Libraries have created a fantastic list of books with empowering female lead characters. tinyurl.com/bm28ea9m

• Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903. The suffragettes, as they became known, were committed to “deeds, not words”. Diane Atkinson explores the lives of more than a hundred militant campaigners in her book Rise Up Women! The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragette (Bloomsbury) and describes the courage of female demonstrators faced with police assaults and being forcibly fed by prison doctors while on hunger strike. In February 1918, women over 30 were finally given the vote.

• Monique Roffey’s novel The Mermaid of Black Conch: A Love Story (Peepal Tree) won the 2020 Costa Book of the Year Award. Set on the Caribbean island of Black Conch, at the start of the rainy season, a fisherman attracts a sea-dweller. Aycayia, a beautiful young woman cursed by jealous wives to live as a mermaid, has been swimming the Caribbean Sea for centuries. Roffey explores themes of unconditional love, friendship, family and loss in her tale of a mermaid drawn from the sea, returned to land, to heal and live again, as a real woman in modern times.

• “Virago” refers to a heroic war-like woman, as well as encompassing dragons, furies, she-devils, sirens and spitfires. The publishing powerhouse was founded in June 1973, and is still going strong. What better time to read Angela Carter’s Book of Wayward Girls and Wicked Women, a bestselling collection of subversive tales by Jane Bowles, Colette, Bessie Head, Jamaica Kincaid and Katherine Mansfield among others.

They have one thing in common: the wish to restore adventuresses and revolutionaries as models for all women. Virago’s latest release is Stella Duffy’s Lullaby Beach, a compelling novel about family secrets and the legacy of trauma, set against the changing fortunes of an English seaside town.

• The undisputed queen of country music, an iconic artist and astute business woman, Dolly Parton’s rise to fame was not an easy one: Born into poverty in east Tennessee, she left for Nashville at 18 with her belongings in three paper bags. She navigated a male-dominated world that underestimated her at every turn, and never lost her connection to her working-class roots. In She Come by it Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived her Songs (Pushkin Press) Sarah Smarsh draws on her own experience of growing up in rural Kansas to craft a resonant portrait of Parton’s cultural importance for the ordinary women who populate her songs including struggling mothers, pregnant teenagers and diner waitresses.

• In August 2018 a 15-year-old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, decided not to go to school. Her actions sparked a global movement for action against the climate crisis, inspiring millions of pupils to go on strike for our planet, forcing governments to listen, and earning her a Nobel Peace Prize nomination. No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference (Penguin) is a collection of Thunberg’s speeches that remind us why we need to fight to protect the living planet, no matter how powerless we feel.

• If you haven’t already read Michelle Obama’s riveting memoir Becoming (Penguin), it’s now available in paperback. As the first African-American to serve as First Lady of the United States of America, she established herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the US and around the world. Obama chronicles the experiences that have shaped her – from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive – and from balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent in the White House.

• For fans of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Janice Hadlow’s The Other Bennet Sister (Pan) tells Mary’s story. Mary is the middle sister and the plainest of the five Bennet girls. Prim, pious and bookish, Mary watches her sisters marry and leave home while she seems destined to remain single and live out her days at Longbourn. Hadlow paints a sympathetic portrait of Mary and offers her the possibility of finding happiness, on her own terms.

• Let’s not forget those girls worldwide who have lost their homes, community or families. Malala’s We Are Displaced (Little, Brown) is part memoir, part communal storytelling. Her experiences visiting refugee camps made her reconsider her own displacement – as a young child in Pakistan and as an international activist who can travel anywhere in the world except to the home she loved. Malala shares the personal stories of some of the courageous girls she has met and reminds us that everyone deserves universal human rights and a safe home.

• Find out more about International Women’s Day at www.internationalwomensday.com

Events

• Blurring the boundaries of drama and concert, Unsung Heroine: the imagined life and love troubadour Countess Beatriz de Dia, follows the fortunes of a medieval Amy Winehouse, accompanied by plaintive music and dance performed by The Telling. This online adaption of the concert/play by Clare Norburn is directed by Nicholas Renton and available to watch for free via Facebook and YouTube from 7pm March 8-15. thetelling.co.uk

• Award-winning comedian Rosie Wilby presents a live, double-episode recording of her acclaimed podcast, The Breakup Monologues for Popular Union’s Women in Focus series. Rosie invites guests to discuss the perils of heartbreak, dating, love, marriage and more. This event will take place online via Zoom. Visit: poplarunion.com

• For its Women in Focus 2021 series, POP-Corn presents an online screening of Sarah Gavron’s, Rocks, a film about one girl’s resilience. Rocks (Bukky Bakray) is a popular teenager with big dreams for the future, brilliant friends and an adoring little brother, Emmanuel (D’angelou Osei Kissiedu). Her world is turned upside down when her mother suddenly leaves. Determined to avoid being taken into care against all odds, Rocks hides around east London with the help of her friends. Visit: poplarunion.com/event/pop-corn-presents-rocks/

• On March 7, part of Women of the World (WOW) UK Festival 2021, is a special Zoom event for grandmothers: What expectations does society set for the grandmother role and how difficult is it to set boundaries without feeling guilty? Join the discussion led by WOW Founder and grandmother of two Jude Kelly, hear from the frontline of grandmotherhood, the joys and challenges of grandparenting, and what we can learn from each other. Tickets from £3. Visit: wow.ticketco.events/uk/en/e/grandmothers