Laura Stanley

Title: Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution Author: Mona Eltahawy Genre: Memoir, current affairs Publisher: Weidenfeld and Nicolson Published: 2016 Pages: 238 In Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution, Mona Eltahawy confronts the forces behind female oppression in the...

Laura’s short story reflects on the struggles faced as a young woman starting university. From an early age, I was taught never go anywhere on your own. To take my sister everywhere with me. Especially to public toilets. You hear stories, don’t you? Just last week, as well. All...

Published in 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman had a daring thesis: women were “rational creatures” and ought to be treated as such. It’s hard to overstate the text’s importance within the history of feminist polemic. Although Wollstonecraft argued against the harsh restrictions 18th century society imposed...

Title: Olivia Author: Dorothy Strachey Genre: Historical fiction, coming of age Publisher: Vintage (The Hogarth Press) Published: 2008 (1949) Pages: 107 Olivia is a tale of lesbian teenage infatuation set against the backdrop of 19th century Paris. At the age of sixteen, Olivia is whisked away to the finishing...

She teeters. It will take 118 years until the global pay gap  between men and women finally closes.   She waits. One foot wedged on a crescent moon of a cradle, she rocks half the world to sleep. A basket of the deep Pacific sways atop her head, brimming,...

‘Please, call me Kate, not Catherine’ suggested that I start writing this. It might help, she offered with another of her well-meaning smiles. She also suggested that I take Ella and Theo away for a bit. How long’s ‘a bit’? Kate doesn’t deal in absolutes. Her sentences start with...

Happy Pride Month. At the DIVA Awards 2018, an award ceremony run by DIVA magazine celebrating LGBT+ women, Holby City won the LGBT Series or Storyline award, beating Netflix mega-hit Orange is the New Black and Canadian web-series Carmilla. The winning storyline was simple: two middle-aged women fell in...