Women Unbound Reading Challenge

Well, I'm definitely late to the game in posting this.  Or at least, I feel late to the game in posting, even though this whole challenge only came about yesterday.  On Twitter (it's a whole new world on there, I tell ya), Eva mentioned that she would like someone to host a Women's Studies Challenge.  Care said she thought that sounded like a good idea, I mentioned that Rosie the Riveter would be proud of all participants, and somehow the three of us ended up co-hosting this challenge.

Whatever it means to host a challenge (I don't know; I never have and yet am planning on doing another one in addition to this.  Go big or go home, I say), this was a huge community effort.  So many people contributed to making the Women Unbound challenge what it is, between coming up with the name (I had no part in that), the buttons (I had no part in that), the time frame (I had no part in that), the commitment levels (I had no part in that), the website (I had no part in that), suggested reading lists (guess what part I had in that), etc., etc.

So really, everyone else did all the work and I'm just taking the credit :-)  Works for me!

Anyway, the Women Unbound Challenge goes from November 1, 2009 - November 30, 2010.  That gives you 13 months to read books that center around "the multidisciplinary study of the social status and societal contributions of women and the relationship between power and gender."  This is a fairly broad definition and encompasses both  fiction and non-fiction books.  The three levels are:

• Philogynist: read at least two books, including at least one nonfiction one.
• Bluestocking: read at least five books, including at least two nonfiction ones.
• Suffragette: read at least eight books, including at least three nonfiction ones.

Generally, my approach to challenges is to bite off more than I can chew and then fail miserably to meet my goals.  As I am a creature of habit, I will be sticking with this somewhat misguided system and am signing up to be a Suffragette!  I have so many history books on women on my shelves that it's time to get them down and get them read.  I will post my reading list once I determine which of those books interest me the most at the moment, and then after posting that list, I'm sure I'll promptly lose all interest in reading any of them.  But at least I'll have shown initiative!

In any case, if you are interested in participating in the Women Unbound challenge, please go to our challenge website here and sign up!  You don't need to have a blog- you can sign up and just challenge yourself to do the reading and then send any reactions you might have to me and I will ensure that they are posted on our website.  The site also gives suggested women's studies reading, and Eva has a great list up at her website here, too.  Hope you all participate- it will be fun and feminine and awesome :-)