Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies

Divided into five parts ("Sexual and Reproductive Health," for example, and "Chronic Disease"), this scholarly one-volume resource uses epidemiological data to explore how sex and gender affect health.

Three volumes that fill a big hole in serious attention to women's sports, from the medieval tennis star Margot of Hainault to 1972's Title IX and beyond. Signed alphabetical entries, with bibliographies, are supplemented by a helpful reader's guide.

Fertility and its implications across the ages make for a fascinating lens on society: polygamy, infant mortality, and eugenics all fall under this book's purview. An appendix gives a country-by-country analysis of birth-control practices.

A sober look at the historical, religious and legal aspects of the American debate over abortion rights.

An annotated list of resources that document the effect on women of deteriorating economic times. Divided into such sections as "The Children of Poverty" and "Housing and Homelessness."

"Prostitutes have long been an object of disgust combined with envy," begins this two-volume scholarly work, whose 341 entries include hip-hop and ancient Rome. A timeline in vol. 1 begins with Sappho of Lesbos' 630 B.C.E. birth and ends with a 2006 unionized sex workers' court case.