International Women’s Day – The Power of Women’s Stories

It’s International Women’s Day, a day ‘celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women’s equality’.

At Better Reading, we are blessed to be surrounded by great women: authors, publishers, booksellers, women in marketing and PR, as well as the women on our team. Mostly, our job is so special because of the community of readers we have here. Every day our community engages, comments (with incredible generosity and kindness) and shows us what this country is reading. And it goes without saying that this is an excellent time for female authors.

As many of you know, Cheryl writes a weekly Notable Books column for The Australian. It is carefully curated by the Literary editor Caroline Overington who is passionate about gender diversity, and reading variety, in the Books pages. She has said, “Women are the backbone of the book industry in Australia. They write wonderful books, they also buy them in huge numbers, they turn up at literary festivals, they work in publishing. They are creative, politically engaged, passionate, community-minded, highly literate and astonishingly well-read.” It’s safe to say that without women, the book industry would collapse.

Overington also says, “I’ve been trying, since I took over as Literary Editor to include something for everyone, and that means more books by women, by writers of colour, more children’s books, more YA, more politics, and memoir, and history, and poetry, more writers from all kinds of different perspectives and backgrounds.”

There’s no better way to support women than to listen, validate and read their stories. On our platform, we share books by female authors. We meet these authors during live events. We hear them via our podcast. But also, we read the comments of our many female readers and followers. So many of you share what you’re reading, how you’re feeling, when you’re struggling and more. We hear you.

Thank you to all the women in the wider Better Reading community. Let’s all continue to share our stories, whatever the medium, and to read great Aussie female authors.