5 Must-Read Career Advice Books for Women
With mounting responsibilities at work and home, working women around the globe struggle with a different kind of challenge as they advance in their career, a challenge only other career women can fully understand. As of 2019, 29% of senior management roles were held by women globally and 33 of the Fortune 500 CEOs were women, meager numbers, but still the highest ever on record. We've made great strides, but women lag substantially behind men in terms of pay and their representation in leadership and management positions. Keeping this in view, here is a list of five career advice books written by driven, successful women, books that empower women and teach them to balance their professional dreams and personal goals, inspiring them to transform their career and live a fuller life.
1. Lean in by Sheryl Sandberg
Facebook COO and one of Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Women in Business draws on her experience working for several of the world's biggest businesses to show women how they can have a balanced work and family life. Told with great clarity and eloquence, Lean In is an international bestseller and an empowering memoir that serves as a call to action, describing how women unintentionally hold themselves back in their careers. The book teaches women to speak up for equal pay, equal rights, and equal opportunities for growth. Lean In is a book that ignited global conversations and sparked debates about women in business, it discusses - in great detail - the barriers women face in the workplace and provides women with practical advice on how to build a satisfying career and ways to combine professional achievement with personal fulfillment.
2. Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office by Lois P. Frankel
Bestselling author, leadership coach, and President of Corporate Coaching International Lois P. Frankel's highlights common mistakes women make at the office in this bestseller and urges her readers to stop playing nice. Frankel explores everything that holds women back from achieving their dreams and shows why their careers stagnate, from worrying too much about offending others to backing down too easily, she presents a list of reasons why women are bypassed for promotions and ignored when they express their ideas. The book offers groundbreaking advice to women so they can take control of their lives and careers, unlearn the counterproductive 'nice-girl' habits and behaviors that are sabotaging their career, and win themselves that corner office!
3. Playing Big: Find Your Voice, Your Mission, Your Message by Tara Mohr
In this deeply insightful self-help book aimed at women, leadership coach, public speaker, and Huffington Post columnist Tara Mohr advances her mission to help women speak up and influence the world for the better. Mohr highlights why it's important for women to communicate better, tackle fear, and take bold action. The book teaches women to overcome self-doubt and implement the changes they want to see in themselves and the world. With its heartening and pragmatic advice, Playing Big has given much-needed encouragement to thousands of women across the world to transform their lives and careers and equip themselves to play big.
4. Drop the Ball By Tiffany Dufu
Women put enormous pressure on themselves to balance work and home. In Drop The Ball, Tiffany Dufu offers some radical advice, urging women to "drop the ball instead of trying to do it all." In a nutshell, the book is an extended pep talk that teaches talented and ambitious women that it's perfectly okay to achieve half of what's on your to-do list and that an ability to let go is essential to living a richer, fuller life. Using her own experience and struggles to balance her personal life and career, Tiffany Dufu offers actionable wisdom on how women should expect less of themselves, shrink their to-do list, embrace imperfection, and enlist the assistance of others to flourish at work and develop more rewarding relationships at home.
5. Girl, Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis
Rachel Hollis first found recognition and fame with her first self-help book Girl, Wash Your Face which was published in 2018 and promoted female self-reliance. With her follow-up book Girl, Stop Apologizing, Hollis is back with her mission to show women how to live to their full potential, how to stop hesitating and pursue their dreams, and how to stop living in fear of being judged. Girl, Stop Apologizing was # 11 on Amazon’s list of best-selling books of 2019 and deals with all the tough questions ambitious women must answer before they flourish, along with lessons they need to unlearn to thrive.
