what she said: conversations about equality

One of Indigo’s Most Anticipated Canadian Books

A passionate advocate for gender equity, and one of our most respected journalists, explores the most pressing issues facing women in Canada today with humour and heart.

The fight for women’s rights was supposed to have been settled. Or, to put it another way, women were supposed to have settled--for what we were grudgingly given, for the crumbs from the table that we had set. For thirty per cent of the seats in Canada’s Parliament; for five per cent of the CEO’s offices; for a tenth of the salary of male athletes; for the tiny per cent of sexual assault cases that result in convictions; for tenuous control over our health and bodies. ＂Aren’t we over it yet? No, we’re not,＂ Elizabeth Renzetti writes.

In this book, Renzetti draws upon her own life story and her years as an award-winning journalist at the Globe and Mail, where her columns followed the trajectory of women’s rights. Forcefully argued, accessible, and witty, What She Said explores a range of issues: the increasingly hostile world of threats that deter young women from seeking a role in public life; the use of non-disclosure agreements to silence victims of sexual harassment and assault; the inadequacy of access to health care and reproductive justice, especially as experienced by Indigenous and racialized women; the ways in which future technologies must be made more inclusive; the disparity in pay, wealth, and savings, and how women are not yet socialized to be the best financial managers they can be; the imbalanced burden of care, from emotional labour to child care.

Renzetti explores the nuance of these issues, so often presented as divisive, with humour and sympathy, in order to unite women at a time when women must work together to protect their fundamental right to exist fully and freely in the world. What She Said is a rallying cry for a more just future.

ELIZABETH RENZETTI is a bestselling Canadian author and journalist. She has worked for the Globe and Mail, where she served as the paper’s Arts and Books editor. In 2020 she won the Landsberg Award for her reporting on gender equality. She is the author of the essay collection Shrewed: A Wry and Closely Observed Look at the Lives of Women and Girls, the novel Based on a True Story. Her first mystery (co-authored with Kate Hilton), Bury the Lead, was published in 2024. She lives in Toronto with her family.