The Best Women in Business Books 2025

1. How to Run Your Business Like a Girl : Successful Strategies from Entrepreneurial Women Who Made It Happen (Paperback)

A tour of three successful women-owned companies furnishes firsthand accounts of how these entrepreneurs deal with various stages of business cycle. Original. 60,000 first printing.

Hardcover, Adams Media Corporation, 2005, ISBN# 1593374550

2. The Ambition Decisions: What Women Know about Work, Family, and the Path to Building a Life, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

Pre-Owned - These are the 'know your value' conversations that we need to have. These women--their challenges, choices, and successes--are all of us. --Mika Brzezinski Over the last sixty years, women's lives have transformed radically from generation to generation. Without a template to follow--a way to peek into the future to catch a glimpse of what leaving this job or marrying that person might mean to us decades from now--women make important decisions blindly, groping for a way forward, winging it, and hoping it all works out. As they faced unexpectedly fraught decisions about their own lives, journalists Hana Schank and Elizabeth Wallace found themselves wondering about the women they'd graduated alongside. What happened to these women who seemed set to reap the rewards of second-wave feminism, on the brink of taking over the world? Where did their ambition lead them? So they tracked down their classmates and, over several hundred hours of interviews, gathered and mapped data about real women's lives that has been missing from our conversations about women and the workplace. Whether you're deciding if you should pass up a promotion in favor of more flex time, planning when to get pregnant, or wondering what the ramifications are of being the only person in your house who ever unloads the dishwasher, The Ambition Decisions is a guide to the changes that may seem arbitrary but are life defining, by women who've been there. Organized by theme, each chapter draws on real women's stories of facing down crisis, transition, and decision-making to illustrate broader trends Schank and Wallace observed. Each chapter wraps up with a useful bulleted list of questions to consider and tips to integrate that will guide women of all ages along the way to finding purpose and passion in work and life.

The Ambition Decisions: What Women Know about Work, Family, and the Path to Building a Life, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

3. Hbr's 10 Must Reads on Women and Leadership (with Bonus Article sheryl Sandberg: The HBR Interview), Pre-Owned (Paperback)

Pre-Owned - What will it take to create a more gender-balanced workplace?If you read nothing else on leadership and gender at work, read these 10 articles by experts in the field. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you understand where gender equality is today--and how far we still have to go.This book will inspire you to: Better understand the path women must take to leadershipLearn the root causes of the barriers that exist for women in the workplaceCheck your own gender biases and distinguish between confidence and competence in your colleaguesManage a more effective gender-diversity programRecognize the issues women face when speaking up about bias or harassmentHelp women reenter the workforce after taking time off--and create opportunities for them to reach their ambitions.This collection of articles includes Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership, by Alice H. Eagly and Linda L. Carli; Do Women Lack Ambition? by Anna Fels; Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers, by Herminia Ibarra, Robin Ely, and Deborah Kolb; Women and the Vision Thing, by Herminia Ibarra and Otilia Obodaru; The Power of Talk: Who Gets Heard and Why, by Deborah Tannen; The Memo Every Woman Keeps in Her Desk, by Kathleen Reardon; Why Diversity Programs Fail, by Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev; Now What? by Joan C. Williams and Suzanne Lebsock; The Battle for Female Talent in Emerging Markets, by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Ripa Rashid; Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success, by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce; and Sheryl Sandberg: The HBR Interview, by Sheryl Sandberg and Adi Ignatius.

Hbr's 10 Must Reads on Women and Leadership (with Bonus Article sheryl Sandberg: The HBR Interview), Pre-Owned (Paperback)

4. Disrupters: Success Strategies From Women Who Break the Mold, Pre-Owned (Paperback)

Pre-Owned - This book is not about what women should do, and it's not a preachy TEDTalk. Disrupters shows what different women in business have done to reach success as they define it. From board members to CEOs to freelancers, the business world is stacked against women because they follow the unspoken rules of business culture made long before women entered the workforce. Tech executive, board member, and angel investor Dr. Patti Fletcher recognizes those rules and then showcases the women who have found success by breaking them. With exciting insights and uplifting stories, Disrupters demystifies what it takes to go where so few have gone before by: Exploring the mindsets that help or hinder success against all odds Discovering the right time to begin the journey to a role that feels too big and too hard to obtain Learning the habits, tactics, and relationships that separate those who succeed from those who do not Building a personal board of directors that will catapult you to the professional boardroom Revealing what it means to achieve your own version of success with case studies and interviews with women of diverse races, ages, backgrounds, and industries

Disrupters: Success Strategies From Women Who Break the Mold, Pre-Owned (Paperback)

5. Women, Work, and Poverty : Women Centered Research for Policy Change, Used [Paperback]

Find out how welfare reform has affected women living at the poverty level Women, Work, and Poverty presents the latest information on women living at or below the poverty level and the changes that need to be made in public policy to allow them to rise above their economic hardships. Using a wide range of research methods, including in-depth interviews, focus groups, small-scale surveys, and analysis of personnel records, the book explores different aspects of women's poverty since the passage of the 1986 welfare reform bill. Anthropologists, economists, political scientists, sociologists, and social workers examine marriage, divorce, children and child care, employment and work schedules, disabilities, mental health, and education, and look at income support programs, such as welfare and unemployment insurance. Women, Work, and Poverty illuminates the changes in the causes of women's poverty following welfare reform in the United States, using up-to-date research that's both qualitative and quantitative. Taking racial and ethnic diversity into account, the book's contributors examine new findings on the feminization of poverty, the role of children and the lack of child care as an obstacle to employment, labor market policies that can reduce poverty and improve gender wage equality, sex and race segregation in the labor market, and the low quality of jobs available to low income women. Women, Work, and Poverty examines: marriage, motherhood, and work pay equity and living wage reforms community resources welfare status and child care acquiring higher education advancing women of color income security repaying debt after divorce gender differences in spendable income women's job loss Women, Work, and Poverty is an invaluable aid for academics working in social work, social policy, women's studies, economics, sociology, and political science, and for policy researchers, anti-poverty activists, and women's leaders.

Women, Work, and Poverty : Women Centered Research for Policy Change, Used [Paperback]

6. Expositions and Trade Shows, Used [Hardcover]

For women who feel that it's impossible to do all the things they would like to do and still be able to enjoy their children, marriage, or job, "Busy Woman's Organizer" can help. The checklists, worksheets, and calendars included in this book aid readers in preparing shopping lists and menus, organizing and maintaining a carpool, remember important dates, plan parties and other family events, and more.

Expositions and Trade Shows, Used [Hardcover]

7. The Organizational Woman: Power and Paradox, Used [Paperback]

This book provides a general overview of barriers to women's advancement in organizations, especially those subtle barriers created by unconscious bias in evaluating women's work and misunderstanding differences in the communication and managerial styles of men and women. The book is based on the fact that women and men face two different work worlds- even if their organizational positions are identical- because the basis for evaluating and understanding women's and men's work is different. Separate sections deal with gender expectations and sex-role differences, fostering an understanding of how and why these different expectations occur and their organizational implications; communication and how differences are carried out and reinforced in organizations; and common organizational problems faced by women. Based on social science research, this book provides a better understanding of how gender influences organizational behavior.

The Organizational Woman : Power and Paradox, Used [Paperback]

8. Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class, Used [Paperback]

An urgent proclamation of what life is like for American women without the security of a financial safety net Indie icon Michelle Tea--whose memoir The Chelsea Whistle details her own working-class roots in gritty Chelsea, Massachusetts--shares these fierce, honest, tender essays written by women who can't go home to the suburbs when ends don't meet. When jobs are scarce and the money has dwindled, these writers have nowhere to go but below the poverty line. The writers offer their different stories not for sympathy or sadness, but an unvarnished portrait of how it was, is, and will be for generations of women growing up working class in America. These wide-ranging essays cover everything from selling blood for grocery money to the culture shock of "jumping" class. Contributors include Dorothy Allison, Bee Lavender, Eileen Myles, and Daisy Hern?ndez.

Without a Net : The Female Experience of Growing up Working Class, Used [Paperback]

9. Earning Respect: The Lives of Working Women in Small Town Ontario, 1920-1960, Used [Paperback]

Between 1920 and 1960 wage-earning women in factories and offices experienced dramatic shifts in their employment conditions, the result of both the Depression and the expansion of work opportunities during the Second World War. Earning Respect examines the lives of white and blue-collar women workers in Peterborough during this period and notes the emerging changes in their work lives, as working daughters gradually became working mothers. Joan Sangster focuses in particular on four large workplaces, examining the gendered division of labour, women's work culture, and the forces that encouraged women's accommodation and resistance on the job. She also connects women's wage work to their social and familial lives and to the larger community context, exploring wage-earning women's 'identities, ' their attempts to cope with economic and family crises, the gendered definitions of working-class respectability, and the nature of paternalism in a small Ontario manufacturing city. Sangster draws upon oral histories as well as archival research as she traces the construction of class and gender relations in 'small town' industrialized Ontario in the mid-twentieth century. She uses this local study to explore key themes and theoretical debate in contemporary women's and working-class history.

Earning Respect : The Lives of Working Women in Small Town Ontario, 1920-1960, Used [Paperback]

10. Working Women in America: Split Dreams [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. The second edition of Working Women in America: Split Dreams highlights current research on critical issues affecting American women in today's global workplace. It features updated information and examples, including extended discussions of women's activism within and outside of the workplace, the impact of globalization, the effects of the glass ceiling and sexual harassment, and women's roles in the U.S. labor movement. Retaining the focus of the first edition, this text emphasizes the continuity of women's work experience. It seeks to dispel the misconception that women's work is a recent phenomenon, when in fact women have been working throughout history. The book also addresses the constant tension and multiple roles that women must manage. The lives of working women are indeed characterized by "split dreams": most women who work are constantly juggling their work and family dreams. It is therefore misleading to concentrate solely on the workplace when seeking to understand women's position at work. Rather, one must pay attention to the connections among societal institutions. To this end, the authors argue for and utilize a structural approach-one that examines the ways in which the economy, education, the family, and the polity reflect and influence one another and help reinforce women's subordination. Only when these connections are brought to light is it possible to begin to formulate alternatives to conventional ideas concerning work, family, and gender roles. The authors begin by situating their research in opposition to dominant sociological models of work. They then provide a thorough historical overview of women at work, carefully examining the diversity of women's experiences by race, ethnicity, class, and age. Economic, legal, political, familial, and educational institutions are also analyzed to show the ways in which they help produce and maintain inequality for women in the workplace. Working Women in America: Split Dreams intersperses first-person accounts throughout the book and provides a number of vignettes of women employed in a variety of occupations. It is an ideal text for courses in women's studies, sociology, economics, social work, and history, and fascinating reading for anyone interested in women and their work.

Working Women in America: Split Dreams [Paperback - Used]