We Are Feminist: An Infographic History of the Women’s Rights Movement

We Are Feminist: An Infographic History of the Women’s Rights Movement 
Foreward by Helen Pankhurst 
Publisher: Modern Books (2019)
Review by Magda Oldziejewska and Ayo Isinkaye 
When you first look at We are Feminist, you might be fooled to think that it’s a children’s book. If I’m being honest, I was. Yet, the beautifully designed, colourful cover hides a rich centre, well worth exploring.
The book is, in fact, an essential reference text for feminists and an excellent introduction for others. It provides visual timelines for each key issue of the feminist movement, highlighting all the breakthroughs: women’s suffrage, abortion rights gains, women in education and science, and more.
The text is international, meaning that even a seasoned feminist can take something new away from it, learning about key feminist milestones and thinkers in parts of the world less known to them. British feminism still tends to be anglo-centric all too often, so it’s refreshing to see a book that breaks through that.
We are Feminist should become an essential educational resource for schools – it provides an easily digestible, graphic, yet rather comprehensive, introduction to the feminist movement and its achievements. Crucially, it does not stop at women winning the right to vote, which so often still seems to be the case in many educational settings.
Perhaps most importantly, for those of us who are already active feminists, it reminds us that change really is possible – all we need to do is look at our own history. We “stand in the footsteps of others in a story of global solidarity” as Helen Pankhurst put it in her introduction. And as Barack Obama once said: “The arc of history is long” and we do well by remembering that. Change does not happen overnight, but it doesn’t mean that it is not worth fighting for. And the book illustrates that very well.
The book is not without its flaws – there were a few points where I thought: I wish they’d mentioned Gerda Lerner or Carolyn Merchant here. But each time I had to remind myself that it would never be possible to capture all of our amazing herstory in one book. And so the resounding feeling at the end of it was of us hoping that We are Feminist continues as a series.