Three women whose books changed the world:

[Sequoia]

Mary W. Shelly: Frankenstein...

Harriet B. Stowe: Uncle Tom's Cabin

Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird

Need I say more? Feel free to add your own women authors.

[supernova]

1. Virginia Woolf: A Room of One's Own (1929)

It's not a book, but a very long essay. AROO is generally regarded as an early modern feminist manifesto for female writers.

[Lost-in-FL]

3. +1, nt

[Lost-in-FL]

2. A Vindication of the Rights of Women-Mary Wollstonecraft

The Second Sex- Simone de Beauvoir

[eppur_se_muova]

22. Interestingly, mother of Mary W(ollstonecraft) Shelley ...

I had to check Wikipedia to see if they weren't the same woman.

[midnight]

4. K&R When the dust settles from the shock and awe criminals...

I know we will list add to the list:

Naomi Klein's: The Shock Doctrine

In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries. http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine

[canoeist52]

14. "The Shock Doctrine" certainly opened a lot of eyes.

I've loaned it to so many people.

[livetohike]

5. Rachel Carson - Silent Spring n/t

[yardwork]

6. Silent Spring was incredibly influential. We need another one like that.

[grilled onions]

7. Author of Peyton Place

My brain cannot fathom here name right now but that name became the standard phrase for every town full of cheating spouses,hypocrites and those who spent their time gossiping about everyone else with little scruples while the gossipers had few themselves!

[dixiegrrrrl]

20. Grace Metalious , 1956.

[indepat]

8. Surely Jane Austin belongs on such a list

:D

[EFerrari]

11. Pride & Prejudice is a terrorist act disguised as a comedy of manners. lol

[Melinda]

9. Margaret Atwood "The Handmaid's Tale" eom

[EFerrari]

10. Beloved, Morrison & its successor, The Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver.

(oh, these unruly women with their wild novels, what will we do with them. :))

[Ruby the Liberal]

12. Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged

In a profoundly negative way. Sakes alive are we paying for that one 60 years after the fact.

[rosesaylavee]

13. Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex

The text that eventually launched the feminist movement. We may not be here talking about this if this book hadn't been published.

[Little Star]

15. Harriet Beecher Stowe - Uncle Tom's Cabin

[EFerrari]

16. The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (Mary Herbert nee Sydney)

[Melinda]

17. Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her own right and as co-author of many important writings...

"History of Women's Suffrage (3 volumes) with Susan B. Anthony, and many other books, essays, periodicals, papers, etc.

[EFerrari]

18. HD wasn't collected until Sea Garden (1916)

but she was out ahead of the modernists.

[femrap]

19. Andrea Dworkin...

"Intercourse."

Marilyn French...."The Women's Room."

This won't be popular here but, Ayn Rand...."Atlas Shrugged."

I forgot Marilyn Waring "If Women Counted."

[silverlib]

24. The Women's Room changed my life...

for the better many years ago. I've read it several times, always identifying with a different character through the years.

[femrap]

26. I'm going to read it again...

it has been a long time.

[dixiegrrrrl]

21. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963

Gloria Steinem, among other things, did this, which I remember so clearly:
Steinem, along with National Organization for Women founder Betty Friedan, Congresswomen Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug, and others, had founded the National Women's Political Caucus in July 1971.
Steinem attempted to run as a national delegate in support of Chisholm's presidential campaign.

( thanks to Wiki for the concise summary)

and Steinem wrote tons of books, articles, was mostly famous for co-founding Ms. Magazine.

[Mira]

23. Marilyn French: The Women's Room n/t

[JitterbugPerfume]

25. Alice Walker

Warrior Marks and The Color Purple . She wrote about female circumcision in Warrior Marks, and the plight of black women in The Color Purple

[YankeyMCC]

27. I'd like to make an honoral mention nominee

Alice Bradley Sheldon aka James Tiptree, Jr

And she's only "honorable mention" not because of any lack of writing skill and talent, or any lack of depth of meaning or insight or ability to draw in the reader into rich and interesting characters and stories. It is only an unfortunate lack of wide spread readership in the general public - probably due to the 'genre' bias since her stories were marketed as science fiction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Tiptree,_Jr.

[ensho]

28. Dr. Mary Daly's books

I higly recc. them

[Manifestor_of_Light]

29. Very mind opening.

I have Gyn/ecology and the WICKEDARY (dictionary).

Very interesting take on male boring society.

So she had xtian men saying she was a harpie from hell. B.F.D. Whoop dee doo.

[Onceuponalife]

30. Ursula K. LeGuin

I don't know if she changed the world, but her "The Lathe of Heaven" certainly changed my life.

I would reiterate Margaret Atwood, also.

[LWolf]

32. I agree.

I got to hear her speak a couple of years ago, after having loved her work for decades, and the depth and breadth of her intelligence and her spirit left me speechless.

[Casandia]

31. Ursula K Le Guin -

I am rereading The Dispossessed. Really gets in to sexism, materialism.

[LWolf]

33. Andre Norton.

She didn't write great literature. Simple science fiction & fantasy stories; most modern readers of those genres haven't read her.

She DID, though, break into a male-dominated field, and pave the way for women authors who came after that.

<snip>

Born February 17, 1912 in Cleveland, Ohio, Alice Mary Norton has always had an affinity to the humanities. She started writing in her teens, inspired by a charismatic high school teacher. First contacts with the publishing world led her, as many other contemporary female writers targeting a male-dominated market, to choose a literary pseudonym. In 1934 she legally changed her name to Andre Alice. The androgynous Andre doesn't really say "male," though it lets people jump to their own conclusions.

<snip>

It has been said that science fiction is primarily philosophy, expounding the right to be different. Nowhere is that truer than in Ms. Norton's writing, where protagonists of many ethnicities have shown their intelligence and valor, and the value of all living things is affirmed.

The critics weren't quick to support her. But eventually they began to notice the consistent quality of her work. Today she is one of SF-F's most lauded female authors, the first woman to receive the Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy and the Nebula Grand Master Award.

Her success paved the way for other women to write in those fields. Writers such as C.J. Cherryh, Anne McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey are inheritors of Andre Norton's legacy.

http://www.andre-norton.org/anorton/anlf.html

She passed away a few years ago.

[pscot]

34. She was one of my favorites

Back in the day when every drug store had a rack of 25 cent paperbacks.

[LWolf]

35. Mine, too.

As a matter of fact, that's how I discovered her. :D

[japple]

36. Pearl S. Buck - The Good Earth

First woman to win a Nobel Prize for Literature.

Also Maxine Hong Kingston and Zora Neale Hurston.