Financial Feminist Summer Reading List
After the year (or, 1.6 years, not that we’re counting) we’ve had, a little R&R seems like the right approach to a mid-pandemic summer. And here at The51, we’re using that time to do some reading—and learn our way to a better, fairer future for our economy.
How are we doing that? So glad you asked! We’re working our way through our Financial Feminist Summer Reading List.
Listen, we know what you’re thinking: not everyone wants to muscle through a personal finance textbook during their precious pandemic summer leisure time. But Financial Feminism is so much deeper (and ahem, more interesting) than just one topic—it’s about industries, economic systems, entrepreneurial stories, and basically everything else that shapes our current and future world.
Here's a list of our recommended beach (or couch) reads fit for fuelling a revolution.
If you’re rethinking your own role in Canada’s ongoing Reconciliation effort, read:
All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward by Tanya Talaga
Highly recommended by our friends at the Canadian Women’s Foundation, is Talaga’s treatise on reconcilliation. In light of harrowing information about residential schools and their ongoing, harmful legacy in Canada, now is the time to necessary primer on colonization and cultural genocide of Indigenous people. As an award-winning Anishinaabe writer and investigative journalist,
Talaga lays out a crystal clear case for Reconciliation efforts that heal our communities and repair our relationship with the land we live on. If you read Braiding Sweetgrass last summer, this is a great follow-up.
Pick up a copy here.
If you’re curious about how economic systems change the way we think, spend, invest, and vote, read:
Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth
If headlines about multi-billionaires, climate change, and political strife make you think, “there has got to be a better way to run the world,” you’re not alone. Economist Kate Raworth dives into the problems at the core of major financial systems around the world and proposes solutions to pressing global issues.
Plus, if you’re a visual learner, this is the book for you: there are plenty of diagrams to help illustrate Raworth’s concepts throughout.
Pick up a copy here.
If you love stories of brilliant, badass women making changes to their industry, read:
Memoirs of a Wildcat by Mary Tidlund
Earlier this year, Mary Tidlund chatted with our co-founder, Shelley Kuipers, on an Instagram Coffee Chat, sharing her incredible story of resilience, innovation and courage. Her illustrious career journeys from becoming the first Black woman CEO in the energy industry, to launching her own charitable foundation, and a LOT more. Pick this one up if you’re in need of career inspiration.
Buy your copy here.
If you’re in the mood to defy and disrupt the Patriarchy, (so, every single day if you’re us) read:
The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy
This is not a book; it’s a feminist manifesto for the 21st century. Feminist activist Mona Eltahawy digs into the “sinful” qualities that women have historically been taught to avoid—and explains why these exact behaviours are actually so essential to driving meaningful change in their lives and communities.
Pick up a copy here.
If you’re seeking a more mindful approach to personal finance, read:
Happy Go Money: Spend Smart, Save Right and Enjoy Life by Melissa Leong.
Published in 2019, Happy Go Money is meant to help build healthy financial habits that make you better off both financially and mentally. And if you’re worried this’ll be a dry read, fear not; Leong deftly combines real-life advice with a sense of humour when tackling daunting topics of emotional spending, budgeting and investing. You may also recognize Leong as the resident money expert on CTV’s The Social.
Buy your copy here.
Read all of these already? We knew we liked you. Let us know what you’ve been reading this summer!