Herlands

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.