Women Who Win: Celebrating Courage, Conviction and Change (Antoinette Lattouf, Penguin)

Before “Lattoufed” entered the lexicon as shorthand for an unjust dismissal, Antoinette Lattouf (How to Lose Friends and Influence White People) was already known for her award-winning media career. In Women Who Win, she places her story alongside those who have been forcing doors open for generations. Lattouf adopts a braided narrative, interweaving reflections on her battle against the ABC with deeply researched accounts of Australian women who have reshaped the nation. The profiles move from First Nations resistance to industrial campaigns, reproductive rights, sport, climate protest and law. While the book highlights iconic women – such as Olympian Fanny Durack, whose legacy outlived the systems that tried to constrain her, and Australian of the Year recipient and activist Grace Tame – it was the less familiar stories that lingered for this reviewer, from Slobodanka Joncevska (who fought BHP for the right to work and won) to Anjali Sharma (the high school student who took the government to court over its climate duty of care) and Amal Naser (who mobilised 300,000 people for the record-breaking March for Humanity across the Sydney Harbour Bridge). These women operated in different arenas, yet shared the same architecture of resistance. Lattouf’s voice is unmistakably biting and tongue-in-cheek, but beneath the sarcasm is something tender. She gathers these women like a shield. Reading Women Who Win feels less like history and more like joining a chorus – a reminder that when you’re fighting injustice, you’re standing side by side with women who refused to disappear.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Eman Mourad is as an Australian-Egyptian emerging writer based on Gadigal land. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

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