12 climate reads for Women’s History Month » Yale Climate Connections

This Yale Climate Connection bookshelf for Women’s History Month begins and ends, appropriately, with history.

“Economica” explores the history of women’s wealth and power, an examination then updated by two new reports on how climate change and the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals have affected women’s historical trajectory.

The list ends with a historical novel, in verse and for young adults, about the life of Eunice Newton Foote, the woman who first recognized that growing emissions of carbon dioxide, from the burning of fossil fuels, could warm the planet.  

In between are three books by women scientists about primatology, marine biology, and botany. Each tracks the incursion of climate change in its own way.

Women also play leading roles in processing the social-psychological, political, and philosophical aspects and impacts of climate change. Some familiar names return with new books on these topics.

And women continue to flourish in climate fiction. Eight of the 12 authors long-listed for this year’s Climate Fiction Prize are women. One of those finalists is included in this bookshelf, between the just-published work of ecological fiction by award-winning Colombian novelist María Ospina and the young adult historical novel about Eunice Newton Foote

As always, the descriptions of the titles are adapted from copy provided by their publishers.

Economica: A Global History of Women, Wealth, and Power by Victoria Bateman (Seal Press 2025, 480 pages, $35.00)

How many female entrepreneurs, economic revolutionaries, merchants, and industrialists can you name? You would be forgiven for thinking that, until very recently, there were none at all. But what about Phryne, the richest woman in ancient Athens, who offered to pay to rebuild the walls of Thebes after the city was razed by Alexander the Great? Or what about Priscilla Wakefield, the writer who set up the first English bank for women and children? From the most successful women of their day to those who struggled to make ends meet, Economica takes you on a journey that begins in the Stone Age and ends in the twenty-first century. By shining a light on the women whose contributions to the economy have been hidden for far too long, Economica is more than a history of women—it is a more accurate economic history of us all. 

The Gender Equality and Climate Policy Scorecard: Advancing Accountability in Nationally Determined Contributions: Progress of the World’s Women Fact Sheets, No. 1 by Kaschak Institute (Kaschak Institute & UN Women 2025 31 pages, free download)

The Gender Equality and Climate Policy Scorecard tracks how effectively countries are responding to the gendered impacts of climate change while promoting women’s participation and leadership in climate action. It assesses the latest round of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) for their gender responsiveness and features an online repository of NDC gender commitments to action, showcasing promising and innovative policy examples to inspire learning, replication, and scale-up across countries and regions.  To track progress on gender-responsive climate action, the Scorecard is composed of 50 indicators across six gender dimensions. The Scorecard has been developed by UN Women and the Kaschak Institute for Social Justice for Women and Girls at Binghamton University.

Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2025

by G. Azcona et al (UN Women 2025, 40 pages, free download)

The “Gender snapshot 2025” sounds the alarm: if current trends continue, the world will reach 2030 with 351 million women and girls still living in extreme poverty, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 5—to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls—missed. This is not inevitable: it would be a political outcome, shaped by systemic neglect, stalled investments, and a retreat from equality. But the data also make clear that a different path is still possible. If we chose to invest even in just one concrete action on closing the gender digital divide, 343.5 million women and girls globally could benefit, lifting 30 million women and girls out of poverty and generating a USD 1.5 trillion windfall. Gender equality is not an ideology; it is foundational to peace, development, and human rights.

Sisters of the Jungle: The Trailblazing Women Who Shaped the Study of Wild Primates by Keriann McGoogan (Douglas & McIntyre 2025, 320 pages, $38.95)

Since the 1970s, the science of primatology has been dominated by women. Sisters of the Jungle shines a light on a scientific discipline in which women take the lead while transporting readers to the far corners of the earth to understand our closest living relatives. Keriann McGoogan’s journey as a primatologist has taken her to Belize and Madagascar studying wild primates, including howler monkeys (the loudest living primate) and lemurs (the most endangered group of animals on the planet). Against this backdrop, she explores the stories of the many women who came before her. Intrepid scientists like Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Birutė Galdikas and Alison Jolly broke boundaries, made astonishing discoveries and ultimately shaped the trajectory of an entire branch of science.

Daughter of Mother of Pearl: Essays by Mandy-Suzanne Wong (Greywolf Press 2026, 168 pages, $18.00 paperback)

Daughter of Mother-of-Pearl collects Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s reminiscences, dreams, investigations, and experiments in being with small invertebrates whose vulnerability and creativity inspire radical reimaginings of Earthlinghood. What, Wong wonders, constitutes a self if a starfish can twist off one of his arms to explore the seafloor on its own? What is an animate being, considering a living snail is also an inanimate shell? What does love mean to a jellyfish, or time to an octopus? Wong’s encounters with nonhuman animals reshape her language into different forms. Wong’s essays invite humans to rethink our relationship to other beings. Instead of capturing or destroying them, using them as resources or reflections of ourselves, she asks us only to coexist with them—to cherish them although, and because, we cannot fully know them.

The Light Between Trees: Rediscovering the Wild Through a Beloved American Fruit by Priyanka Kumar (Island Press 2025, 252 pages, $32.00)

As a child in the foothills of the Himalayas, Priyanka Kumar was entranced by forest-like orchards of diverse and luscious fruit—especially apples. These biodiverse orchards seemed worlds away from the cardboard apples that lined supermarket shelves in the United States. Yet on a small patch of woods near her home in Santa Fe, Kumar discovered a wild apple tree—and the seeds of an odyssey were planted. Could the taste of a feral apple offer a doorway to the wild? So inspired, Kumar takes us on a dazzling and transformative journey to rediscover apples, unearthing a rich and complex history while illuminating how we can reimagine our relationship with nature. In The Light Between Apple Trees, Kumar shows how—if we follow untamed paths—the tang and texture of an apple can lead us back to the wild.

The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change by Rebecca Solnit (Haymarket Books 2026, 160 pages, $16.95 paperback).

In this sequel to her enduring bestseller Hope in the Dark, Solnit surveys a world that has changed dramatically since the year 1960. Despite the forces seeking to turn back the clock on history, change is not a possibility; it is an inevitability. The changes amount to nothing less than dismantling an old civilization and building a new one. In this rising worldview, interconnection is a core idea and value. But because the transformation is obscured within a longer arc of history, its scale is seldom recognized. While the white nationalist and authoritarian backlash drives individualism and isolation, this new world embraces antiracism, feminism, and expansive understandings of gender, environmental thinking, scientific breakthroughs, and Indigenous and non-Western ideas, pointing toward a more interconnected, relational world.

Natural Connection: Six Roots of Environmental Wisdom & Action by Jocelyn Longdon (Princeton University Press 2026, 368 pages, $22.95 paperback)

Reimagining environmentalism as an act of doing and a way of being in the world and climate action as a shared goal, not an individual burden, Natural Connection draws on the legacies and ongoing resistance of marginalised communities around the globe to guide us toward a more sustainable relationship with the living world. Joycelyn Longdon defines six conceptual roots—rage, imagination, innovation, theory, healing and care—that can help us to transform environmentalism from the ground up and cultivate the natural connection so essential to creating a safe and thriving world. Lyrical and provocative, this deeply humane book interweaves resonant ideas from writers, philosophers, environmentalists, and other changemakers. Rooted in their knowledge, Natural Connection cultivates hope in growing a better future together.

Climate Wayfinding: Healing Ourselves and the Planet We Call Home by Katharine R. Wilkinson (Andrew & McMeel 2026, 256 pages, $27.99)

Through her transformational programs and books, including All We Can Save, Wilkinson has inspired hundreds of thousands of climate journeys. In Climate Wayfinding, she shares a proven process for looking inward with care, outward with curiosity, and forward with courage. With her singular blend of warmth and rigor, Wilkinson lights the way through stirring personal essays, interwoven with the wisdom of other climate leaders and the beauty of poetry, art, and song. A book to sit with and savor, Climate Wayfinding also invites engagement with journaling prompts, practical exercises, and guides for conversation. Whether steeped in climate or newly curious, readers will discover something grounding and generative in these pages. The terrain ahead is calling—and we have everything we need to find our way.

Only a Little While Here: A Novel by María Ospina (Scribner Books 2026, 224 pages, $28.00)

In Only a Little While Here, award-winning Colombian author María Ospina evokes the gratification to be found through close, humble observation of nature. With characteristic precision and intensity, Ospina trains our attention on the lives of five creatures: a migratory songbird dazzled by city lights, an orphaned porcupine saved by kindness, two dogs grieving the loss of their human companions, and a determined beetle transported to a vast, unimaginable world. The surprising drama of their lives reveals the fragility and power of belonging, and what it means to create—or lose—a home. Along the way, our narrator models the attentiveness needed to mend the rift between humans and non-human creatures and celebrates animals’ often-overlooked status as witnesses of our shared world. This is soul-stirring ecological fiction.

Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan (Pantheon 2025, 320 pages, $28.00)

Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape. But then she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay. Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Listening, Mia’s memories become entangled with Bo’s own. Bo senses how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Bo decides to honor their disappearing world, and this woman who’s brought her back to it. She learns how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate what will be lost.

Footeprint: Eunice Newton Foote at the Dawn of Climate Science and Women’s Rights by Lindsay H. Metcalf (Charlesbridge Teen 2026, 304 pages, $18.99)

This journey through time, triumph, trepidation, and trauma reveals the extra-ordinary life and work of Eunice Newton Foote. Her most important discovery was recognizing the effect of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: a warming planet. But in a society driven by coal, kerosene, and crude oil, Eunice’s warnings went unheeded. After all, who would listen to a woman—especially a woman known to consort with suffragists? From the Seneca Falls Convention to the halls of the US Patent Office in Washington, DC, Eunice Newton Foote blazed a trail for independence and inquiry. Today Eunice’s discoveries feel ever more prescient. Today she is finally receiving the credit she deserves. Eunice Newton Foote’s extraordinary tale is told in novel-in-verse format, perfect for teenagers interested in STEM.