Songs on Women's Issues

There is a chapter of women's songs in Rise Up Singing: riseupandsing.org/songbook/rise-up-singing/women There is a list of other songs about women on p.252 at the end of the "Women" chapter.

There is not a specific chapter on women in Rise Again, but there are songs about sexism in the "Dignity & Diversity" chapter: riseupandsing.org/songbook/rise-again/dignity-diversity

A great collection is Here's to the Women: 100 Songs for & about American Women by Hilda Wenner & Elizabeth Freilicher. You can order it from Sing Out. 

Here are a few leading feminist singers:

• Holly Near
• Cris Williamson
• Bev Grant
• Emma's Revolution (Pat Humphries & Sandy O)
• Judy Small
• Peggy Seeger

Here are some of our favorite women's songs in Rise Up Singing:

• Bella Ciao (lyrics in RUS are from feminists in 1970s)
• Beware, O Take Care (trad. Amer.)
• Bread & Roses
• Can't Kill the Spirit (Naomi Morena)
• Custom-Made Woman Blues (Alice Gerrard)
• Fifty-nine Cents (Fred Small)
• Fight Back (Holly Near)
• Glad to Be a Woman (Betsy Rose)
• I Am a Woman (Ruth Pelham)
• I'm Gonna Be an Engineer (Peggy Seeger)
• Mothers, Daughters, Wives (Judy Small)
• Mountain Song (Holly Near)
• No Hole in My Head (Malvina Reynolds)
• Sister (Cris Williamson)
• Still Ain't Satisfied (Bonnie Lockhart)
• We Don't Need the Men (Malvina Reynolds)
• The Woman in Your Life (Alix Dobkin)

And iIn Rise Again:

• Don't Put Her Down (Hazel Dickens)
• Ella's Song (Bernice Johnson Reagon)
• I Am Willing (Holly Near)
• I Will Survive (Gloria Gaynor)
• Rosa's Lovely Daughters (Robb Johnson)
• Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves (Annie Lennox)
• These Boots Are Made for Walkin' (Nancy Sinatra)
• We Were There (Bev Grant)
• Women Be Wise (Sippie Wallace)

Other songs in The Music Box:

• Arbeter Froyen (Dovid Edelstadt)
• Fight Like a Girl (Raye Zaragoza)
• Four Women (Nina Simone)
• I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free (Nina Simone)
• Miriam's Song (Debbie Friedman)
• Never One Thing (May Erlewine)
• Put a Woman in Charge (Keb' Mo' & Rosanne Cash)
• Resilient (Rising Appalachia)
• Shuttle & Loom (Si Kahn)
• These Hands (Linda Hirschhorn)
• Warrior (Kim Baryluk of the Wyrd Sisters - on ending violence towards women)
• Woman's Anthem - one of the songs inspiring the freedom struggle that began in Iran in 2022 with the death of Mahsa Amini
• A Woman's Place (Sara Thomsen)
• Working Class Woman (Barbara Dane)