Herlands : Lessons From Societies Where Women Make the Rules

A vital exploration of women-led communities worldwide and what they can teach us from BBC global correspondent Megha Mohan.

Society isn’t working for women. Or any of us.

But what if the rules were different?

Imagine a world in which women have all the power. A world in which they work together to shape their rules, societies and futures. In myth, literature and throughout history such groups have always existed, and today all-women communities thrive all over the world. In this urgent and ground-breaking book, Megha Mohan goes in search of the roots of these societies, discovering a vibrant, worldwide history brought together here for the first time. Herlands asks: How and why do these groups exist today? And what can the rest of society learn from them?

Using her great-grandmother’s matrilineal Nair community as a starting point, Mohan introduces readers to some of the countless women-only groups living on their own terms, often operating discretely from the male-dominated cultural and political mainstream. From the Megalia feminist ‘trolls’ of South Korea, a secret Womyn’s Land in the American Deep South, gatherings of millionaire girlbosses and the rise and fall of a women-only island in the Baltic Sea, to the survivors of sexual violence in rural Kenya, Herlands will offer a global look at women’s community and why it matters for us all.