This topic page includes feminist songs and other songs about women's experience.
- 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
- Rise Up Singing also includes a Men chapter of men's antisexist songs
A great collection is Here's to the Women: 100 Songs for & about American Women by Hilda Wenner & Elizabeth Freilicher.
Here are the artist pages for 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)
- Women Are Coming (Bev Grant)
- Working Class Woman (Barbara Dane)