Although I was interested in the topics discussed in this book, I found that the audio book format made it difficult for me to fully engage with it. It’s possible that if I were to read a hard copy of this book it would have been a better experience but listening it made it difficult to focus on the content in a meaning full way. I also found that the focus on the United States made it a little bit difficult to feel connected to the information since I don’t live in the United States. There is a lot of overlap with the situation in Canada, but some substantial changes make even the similarities difficult to connect with.

I did find that the author had some good research, but the presentation of the book made it difficult for me to like the book the way that I had hoped I would,

I received an advanced copy of this book from Netgalley, all opinions are my own.

I had such a hard time starting this one because I kept getting so angry and what Ms. Cox was saying. There is so much good and necessary information here and it is definitely worth taking in. She did her research and comes with receipts.

I was drawn to this book by the title, the cover and the description, and was happy to be granted a copy from NetGalley. WOW, I DID NOT EXPECT TO LOVE THIS BOOK!
I was impressed by the history and research that was in this book. I feel empowered having read this, but think this deserves a wide audience, that means men also!

I appreciated much of this book, but didn't realize it was filtered through the eyes of a non-US journalist. Since this author is also a broadcaster, the voice of the audiobook is wonderfully crafted. There was so much to unpack in this one that most readers will need to continue their learning journey with additional texts, specifically historical ones or biographies of women mentioned. Having a minor in women's studies from university, some of this information was already known but many will find this new or deeper thoughts than they have read before. Completely a read for everyone to understand women's frustrations around work and pay. Thanks NetGalley for the ARC of the audiobook.

This book was a great reminder of the struggles that women are still facing and how recently some of the changes happened. We take so many of the rights that we have right now for granted and this highlighted the women who fought so that we can have these rights.

This was a 4.5 star read for me.

I will be the first to admit that the subject of this book (women/women's empowerment/feminism) is a special interest of mine. I love reading about this subject, and I have read quite a few books about this topic. This is the book I would recommend first.

If you really don't know much about the women's journey in the last century, this is a fantastic overview. It's a decently wide look at this subject, and that's where it looses a half of a star for me, because there were just some things that were not explored as much as I wanted personally. THAT'S A ME PROBLEM.

That being said, I think this book is great. It's fascinating, and well-researched, and inclusive to the civil rights movement that happened during the time it talks about. I am decently well-educated on what this book talks about, and I still learned things. It felt both personal with the unique stories about specific people that it tells, and wide enough that it tells the bigger picture in a really understandable way.

The writing is easy to understand and easy to read, and I believe the audiobook was fantastic. There was never a point that I felt like it dragged or was annoyed by the audio. It was a very good reading experience overall.

One thing I will call out is a kind of off-hand remark it made about birth control and why birth control was made for women. I've always believed that birth control was made for women because men don't want to deal with the side effects, however with this book I finally understood that birth control was made for women because men do not face the consequences of pregnancy enough to worry about birth control. Oh, how I hate that, and oh how eye opening that realization was for me.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, I would really recommend it, and I'm glad that I got the opportunity to read it.

Overall, this book would have been 3-4 stars for me. That is, until the author cited research from "Israelis" studying social accountability. (If there was anything funny about writing those three words in a sentence together, it would be quite laughable. But after six months of genocide, I don't find many things funny anymore.)

How can you write an entire book on the disenfranchisement of women and then directly cite those who are living on stolen land while they actively commit genocide against millions of women? Women who still have the keys to their stolen homes? Women having c-sections without anesthesia? Women who are holding the bodies of their dead children? Women who are shot directly in the head for being a journalist? Women whose children are now orphans and attempting to survive without them?

Do I need to go on?

If your feminism doesn't include the liberation of the Palestinian women and girls, then I don't want it.

I met with Josie several years ago in London, at a dinner at a friend's place. She already worked as a journalist at the time and came across to me as a striking person: witty, funny, energetic and above all else professional. In the subsequent years I have more or less followed her in the social media, and I'm now absolutely amazed to listen to her reading her own book.

This is a powerful book packed with lots of stories about strong women, opportunities and achievements, and the effects they made. Saying that this book made me angry is an understatement. I was furious at some points. But I'm so glad it was written.

Many thanks to NetGalley for an ARC.

Women’s history is a passion of mine and I am always looking for new material and insight. Political and social histories of women have been more well documented in recent years, but I was incredibly interested to gain a better understanding of economic history. Josie Cox’s Women Money Power is incredibly well researched and the text is presented in an informative manner, but with highlights and individual stories that make it relatable.

From an historical standpoint I was aware of the limitations of previous generations of women to education, employment opportunities, and essentially economic opportunities. As a millennial it is astounding to me that my own mother was not able to gain credit or open a bank account in her own name until the 70s in some states. Or even go to a bar and be served at the counter until that time period. However, I wanted more information on pay disparity and the reasons behind it today, and Cox delivered quite well on this subject. As a public employee I took for granted public posting of pay schedules and advancements. I was completely uninformed that in the private sector pay salaries and schedules may not be posted and or even a range on salary may not be posted. The fact that companies might have policies about discussing pay with colleagues is absurd. Of course this is only to discriminate in pay, why else would there be such a policy? Also, that many women CEOs only attained their positions at the time their company was in jeopardy was enlightening. Who better to blame for downing the ship than the women at the helm?

Highlights focusing on activist women such as Betty Friedan, Lily Ledbetter, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, etc were well done. However, a more well-rounded intersectional perspective would have been appreciated. I listened to the audio production which was narrated by the author, which I enjoyed. Reading such an informative text would have been more difficult for me.

My initial impression of this book was very positive. It does a good job of covering women, money, and power (funny that) throughout history in the US. I would say that it comes off more academic in writing which makes listening to it a bit difficult because you really need to focus. There is a way to write nonfiction but also have a story. I always appreciate hearing what women in the past have gone through because it makes me appreciate being a woman today, standing on the shoulders of all those before me. It’s easy nowadays to take granted when the reality is that women have not had these rights for all that long frankly. Ultimately, it’s a good book however I think I would recommend reading it rather than listening to it because of that academic tone it has.

Thank you, NetGalley, RBMedia, and Josie Cox for early access to the audiobook for Women Money Power!

Women Money Power does a great job recounting the history of Women's financial independence and modern-day challenges women face despite early achievements. I think this book did a great job highlighting key figures in the fight, as well as some women who were overlooked by history books despite their significant contributions.

Women Money Power is a great starting point for the conversations that need to happen regarding women's financial independence, and it got me thinking about our situation today. Some important points that Cox made were the unequal division of labor in the home, and how being the default parent has been detrimental to women's careers and their advancement at work + their annual raises. I think this could have been taken a step further. In the opening of the book, Cox describes how a CEO states that some women "choose" not to advance in a company, shifting blame. Cox also talks about how women gained and lost the right to choice in the context of abortions.

I think the final point that needed to be made was the gain and loss of the choice to work. For wealthy and upper-middle-class women, it is likely still a choice to work or stay at home, but for lower-class and even middle-class women that is not the case. In today's economy, these women are making decisions based on the needs of their families. The choice to work is often based on family survival and success. Today for many American families, if there are no other childcare options, parents need to decide if daycare tuition is worth it. If the tuition is higher than the woman's salary, she may have to leave work in order to save her family money. In other situations, without the dual-income the family will fall under the poverty line because of low wages, and outdated minimum wages across America. These aspects take away a woman's CHOICE.

One of the issues I had with this book was how it almost talked about women in the workforce as an investment and how we want more women in the workforce only for the potential economic benefits it has for businesses. But without adequate support for mothers/families in America this only functions to destroy the family unit. As an American woman, it often feels like instead of getting the supports we need to have a family and a career, our government is instead working to push up expenses to force our hands into entering the workforce to stay afloat.

Another issue this book had was diversity. Although Cox does a great job highlighting the work of White Black and Jewish American women, it falls short for every other community, and even goes as far as to push stereotypes. This first became apparent to me when Cox started listing VP Kamala Harris's achievements. First Black person to become Vice President, and the highest serving woman in the US Government in history. What is missing? Kamala Harris's South Asian identity. Kamala Harris is also the highest-serving Asian American in the US Government in history, but her South Asian identity is never mentioned, even though her identity as a Black woman is repeatedly discussed. I also noticed that while listing female leaders of state, although many South Asian and Muslim countries had female leaders of state before many European countries (like Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, Charika Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka, or Khaleda Zia of Bangladesh) they were not included in the list. The only mention of South Asian or Muslim women was to mention a statistic about women's voices being interrupted by men, and saying that it was much higher in Pakistan. As a Muslim woman, it almost made me laugh considering the rights that the women in this book were fighting for were given to Muslim women centuries beforehand by Islamic law, such as the right to inheritance, and the right to own their property and money. The Muslim and South Asian worlds are definitely not perfect in terms of women's rights (the same is still clearly true for Western countries as presented by this book), but to only mention these two communities by highlighting their faults, while very obviously omitting their achievements pushes harmful stereotypes. The same issue arises for Hispanic women. Although the word "machismo" is repeatedly used throughout the book, Hispanic women are mentioned in one line about protests for equal pay, in which "Puerto Rican housekeepers" participated. That's it. Again, this pushes stereotypes about Hispanic women. In the epilogue, Cox asks readers to think carefully about what their words mean, and to be careful about pushing stereotypes about women, and I think she also needs to think about the stereotypes that were pushed in her book by the details she chose to include, and the ones she did not.

Note: I was provided a digital (audiobook) ARC by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Interesting listen on the economic history of women in the United States beginning around the suffrage movement and ending with current day events. It is by no means comprehensive but nor can it be within 300+ pages. It kept my attention while providing historial information on key legislation and figures. While it obviously touched on household names like Betty Friedan & the Feminine Mystique it also covered lesser immortalized names like Pauli Murray. This is an academic text which looks through the lens of the financial and economic impact on women.

Audiobook was narrated by the author Josie Cox - whom I thought did a good job with the audio.

I read Women Money Power as an audiobook, and love that the book was narrated by the author. I found Josie Cox’s voice fitting for this particular topic and had no problem listening to her for hours at a time. I enjoy listening to audiobooks that are sped up, and found that I could listen to this book on 2x speed with good clarity.

I felt I already knew a decent amount about this topic, but I still learned so much! I felt inspired and moved by the stories of women throughout history who have fought for equality. This is such an important topic, and we still have work to do. This book should be required reading!

Copied from Goodreads:
“Women Money Power” revisits some of the pivotal ways that gender, government, and economics intersect. As someone who enjoys sociological history, none of this non-fiction text was surprising. However, the anecdotes and information were written with appropriate detail, context, and an engaging manner. Financial journalist Josie Cox looks at the myriad of ways that American institutions impact those who identify as female. Cox very appropriately recognizes her privilege as a cisgendered, heterosexual woman at the start and end of the text. I appreciated that she clearly identified herself and that her text represents one perspective. I was impressed with Cox’s narration of her own work. She was both evocative and matter of fact, drawing the reader in with words and voice. Unfortunately, Cox’s very thorough text also reminded me of the minimal progress and significant work required to develop economic equality across genders.

“Women Money Power” was released in the U.S. on March 5, 2024. Many thanks to RB Media and Netgalley for this audio ARC given in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Enlightening, engaging and insightful. This should be mandatory reading for everyone! I had high expectations for the content, but it surpassed them. The structure was that the author recounted stories of specific women, following a chronological order, in a very engaging interesting way, describing them comprehensively so we understand them as full people. And using their stories to demonstrate real changes made and/or real difficulties that women encounter. All the while, these stories are substantiated and filled with countless statistics and supporting facts. This book is such a comprehensive take of how complex the issue is of women and economic parity. I never realized, despite how much progress has been made, how far away we still are, and how so recent some of these changes have occurred. I would recommend this book to everyone!

Thank you, NetGalley and RB Media for this advanced readers audiobook! The author delves into the history of power and politics behind women voting and being able to control to control their own money and hold property. The author describes how these factors contribute to how women are able to gain education and care and support themselves and their families. Josie Cox shows just how far women have come, but there are still those who wish to take away those rights. I loved this book as it shows some of these rights were only gained not that long ago and we need to fight to keep them.

There was some good historical information in here, but I was having a hard time with some of the things the author was saying. This ended up being a DNF for me. I just couldn't make myself keep going when the content was not something I was enjoying.

4.5

In Women Money Power, financial journalist Josie Cox walks through the fight for women's economic equality in the United States. She argues that women's equality relies on financial freedom, showing how things like access to family planning (whether it be contraceptives or abortion) play a pivotal role in gender equality. She tracks legislation that has made it possible for women to get fired or not hired based on their probability of leaving the workforce to raise children and how the modern childcare crisis is forcing women out of the workforce at alarming levels.

Overall, I thought this was a really well researched book! It does lean a little dry and fact heavy but I appreciated the humanity she was able to bring to some of the pioneers of gender equality. If you're looking to pick up a good nonfiction this Women's History Month (or whenever because diversity shouldn't be limited to a certain time of year), I highly recommend this!