what does it mean to be a dangerous woman?
The University of Edinburgh has just launched a book that we all need to know about. It’s called Dangerous Women and it needs our support to come into print.
On the 22nd of August, London’s publishing house Unbound opened a crowdfunding campaign for the book that consists of 50 pieces answering the question, “What does it mean to be a dangerous woman?” The campaign refers to slurs from media houses, such as The Sun or Daily Mail, calling First Minister Nicola Sturgeon or Labour’s Shami Chakrabarti, “the most dangerous woman in Britain.” It aims to redefine the term by exploring the impact ‘dangerous’ women have had on the world throughout time.
The book presents the University as a place for a wide variety of academics to come together and challenge the restrictions of society amongst artists, poets, animators, playwrights, performers and opinion formers. Stemming from the original project that The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities ran from International Women’s Day 2016-2017 with a blog post a day, it features work from Bidisha and Jo Clifford, covering topics such as the lives of widows in Nepal and Florence’s prostitutes. The book hosts fifty-two authors on fifty different people, movements or ideas. All it lacks is us.
Unbound’s publishing scheme enables books that wouldn’t otherwise be published come into print, so we all need to pledge to make this book a reality. Starting at £15 to get your name in the back of the book or £5000 to be declared the most dangerous man or woman in Britain, there is a pledge for all of us. (If you know someone who can afford that top pledge lmk I wanna say hi.)
On a more personal note, I have worked on this project all summer, editing pieces and conversing with authors, all of whom are wonderful women. The support coming from academics has been fantastic - we reached 2% of our overall funding budget in the first morning of the campaign. This, however, is not the point. I don’t want this to just be a book bought by academics supporting a good cause, I don’t want to just be filling more book shelves. I want to contribute to the wider discussion regarding the role of women in a social narrative. I want my pals to own a book that has their pal’s name on the cover, knowing that as young people, we can be the name on the cover. I want my younger self to have read this book, I want little cousins and siblings and grandparents to read this all over the world, and I want everyone to have a quick answer to the question “who is your female idol?”.
Please do check out this book and get your name in the back, because if it’s only crusty academics or men with great intentions, we’ve missed the point entirely.
To give substance to my statement, I have blagged a 10% discount code for the Back 2 School period - pop in DWUNI at check out. This will last for two weeks and is specifically aimed at all the young people who want to support and encourage the good efforts coming from the institution!