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We read to learn to hear experience unlike our own and accept it as well-founded.
Apply to The Order Come to a free open evening
Same book. Different readings. One conversation that bridges worlds.
Womafreesm Reading Order is the international reading project of Womafreesm. A fixed circle of readers from different countries spends a five-month season together: one book a month, one meeting per book, the book read in any language and discussed in English. Womafreesm membership includes a place in the closed circle, The Order: 12 to 16 places a season, by application. Open evenings are free for everyone.
The first season is being formed and begins once twelve participants hold places in The Order.
One reader sees the heroine as a victim of circumstance. Another reads her as a calculating player. A third sees a woman whose choices were made for her, and each of the three can point to the same page.
Womafreesm Reading Order is an international book club created by Womafreesm, an international nonprofit organization. Readers from different countries read the same book, each in the language they choose, and discuss it in English, so that each person learns to hear a reading unlike their own and to take it as well-founded. The project has free open evenings and one closed circle, The Order: 12 to 16 people who spend a five-month season together. The project is at its first stage: the first season is being formed and begins once twelve participants hold places in The Order.
Womafreesm works so that women’s experience is accepted as credible in the economy, in law and in technology. Reading Order trains the same skill on literature, in small rooms where each person speaks and is heard.
Two public formats let you try the conversation. The third is the season itself.
| Open evening: Conversation | Open evening: Panel | The Order | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A public evening around one short text: a story, an essay, a poem or an excerpt from a book. | A conversation with a guest, an author, a translator or a critic, then questions from the room and the chat. | A fixed circle that goes through the whole season together, with one meeting for each book. |
| Size | 20 to 40 people, in rooms of five | From 50 people, open to all | 12 to 16, the same people all season |
| Length | 75 minutes | 60 to 75 minutes | 90 minutes |
| When | Before and during each season | Once or twice a season, when a guest agrees | Once a month for five months |
| Access | Free, by registration | Free, open | Womafreesm members, by application |
| Preparation | The text arrives with your registration | Bring a question for the guest | The book and one quote |
| Privacy | Shared part recorded, rooms of five not | Public, recorded in full | Not recorded, what is said stays in the circle |
The books rise in effort. The first reads in two evenings, the last is the longest, and by the fourth the circle holds together through its people.
Who gets listened to, and whose account counts as credible.
Marjane Satrapi | Iran and France, graphic novel
A girl grows up in Tehran during and after the 1979 revolution, then moves to Europe. Who has the right to tell the story of a country and of oneself, and what happens when someone tells it for you?
Independence, the price of freedom, and unseen work.
Sayaka Murata | Japan, about 160 pages
A woman of 36 works in a Tokyo convenience store and fully means to keep both the job and her single life. The price of meeting other people’s expectations, and how differently cultures read the word “normal”.
Home, belonging, and losing it.
Jhumpa Lahiri | India and the United States, about 290 pages
The son of Bengali immigrants in America lives between the name his parents gave him and the one he chose himself. A belonging that is only partly chosen, and what parents and children inherit from each other.
Who decides, and what happens when the balance of power shifts.
Naomi Alderman | United Kingdom, about 340 pages
Women gain the ability to cause pain by touch, and the familiar order falls in a few years. The most disputed book of the season, placed last, once the circle knows how to disagree and stay together.
Month 5 closes the season: a final meeting, a guest where one has agreed to come (an author, a translator or a researcher), renewal of places and the call for the next season.
How the books were chosen: each shifts the usual way of seeing, is available in English and widely translated, runs to 350 pages or fewer, leaves room for conflicting readings and comes from a different country. Texts for open evenings are chosen separately. The first evenings read two short texts in the public domain: Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour (1894) and Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party (1922).
A meeting of The Order, 90 minutes
The host reads a key passage aloud, and the circle gives a first reaction.
A shared conversation about the book’s central conflict.
Work in threes on one set question.
The threes come back, each with one finding.
Evidence: a fact from Womafreesm research where the book meets it, or open discussion.
One Line: each person puts into words one thought to take away.
A week before each meeting, participants receive two documents from the program lead. The thesis of the month is one page with the central question and why it is disputed. The book dossier gives one or two pages of context: the author, the period, key ideas, and the places where readings usually split.
Three days before a meeting, any participant can send the program lead one thought or question in writing. The lead brings it into the circle and names its author. It is an option, never a duty, and a thought that comes after the meeting can be sent the same way.
The text, its author, and the problem worth talking about.
Context from the host: what is disputed and where readings split.
Rooms of five, one set question, each room with a volunteer host.
Back together: each room brings one finding.
About The Order: how to get a place and when the next season starts.
The research behind this format. This is not a reading list. These are the studies behind how the circles are set up.
Fay, N., Garrod, S., Carletta, J. (2000). Group discussion as interactive dialogue or as serial monologue: the influence of group size. Psychological Science, 11(6), 481-486. doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00292
Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384-399. doi.org/10.1037/h0022100
Tuckman, B. W., Jensen, M. A. C. (1977). Stages of small-group development revisited. Group & Organization Studies, 2(4), 419-427. doi.org/10.1177/105960117700200404
Swift, J. K., Greenberg, R. P. (2012). Premature discontinuation in adult psychotherapy: a meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 80(4), 547-559. doi.org/10.1037/a0028226
You read each book in the language you think in. The books were chosen for wide translation.
The circle talks in English, because one shared language keeps a small group in one room. The English we ask for is practical: you can follow a discussion of a book and put a thought into a few sentences.
The application includes a voice message in English, a minute to a minute and a half long. It lets the program lead hear your spoken English and takes the place of an interview.
If the discussion feels too fast at first, you and the program lead talk one to one. Usually you agree on what helps: your thought raised in the circle in your name, the first turn to speak in your small group, or a written note after the meeting. Sometimes you agree that this season is not the right fit, and the open evenings stay open to you, where the text is short and the room is five people.
The first season meets in a European time window. For open evenings, each announcement names the English needed, and you decide what feels comfortable.
Women and men read and talk together in Reading Order. The lens belongs to Womafreesm: the mission, the choice of books and the questions put to each book come from an organization that works with women’s experience.
Reading Order is for adults, 18 and over, from any country. Age, profession and literary training count for less than a readiness to read closely and to hear a reading unlike yours.
Nikita Sitnov
Program lead, Womafreesm Reading Order
Teacher and facilitator. Runs corporate reading clubs in English and Ukrainian. MSc in Management, University of Edinburgh. Chevening Scholar.
Womafreesm membership includes a place in The Order, on any of its three paths:
Those who want a confirmed place inside the organization, access to its internal materials and a steady way to support the work every month.
$14 per month · cancel in one click
Those who support the work at a higher regular level and want to see from the inside how the organization is built and where support goes.
from $125 per month · cancel in one click
Anyone ready to give skills, time and a finished result in one of sixteen areas, from outreach and research to design, IT and legal support.
no payment · membership active after 3 accepted tasks in 30 days
Places are given by application, 12 to 16 in a circle. Anyone can apply, member or future member: the application is accepted first, and membership on any path then confirms the place.
On the Volunteer Guild path, your place is held from the day your application is accepted, and you join the circle at the first meeting of the season. The Guild count of three accepted tasks within 30 days runs alongside the season. Some of those tasks can be done inside the club: hosting a room at an open evening, gathering materials for a book, proofreading a book dossier or writing a note after a meeting.
Within a season, nobody leaves the circle over membership status. For the next season, an active membership is one of the conditions.
Entry to open evenings is free for anyone.
Confidentiality in The Order rests on one rule: what a person says in the circle stays there. That rule lets people say in the circle what they would keep out of a public room.
Before the season, every participant receives the meeting rules on one page, the confidentiality rule among them. Meetings of The Order are never recorded.
Quotes leave the circle in one case only: without names, from participants who ticked the optional research consent in their application. Your place never depends on that box.
Open evenings are public. At a Conversation evening, the opening and closing are recorded and may be used in Womafreesm materials, while conversations in the rooms of five are not recorded. A Panel is recorded in full.
Your application serves one task: reviewing it. Your voice message is heard only by the program lead, is never published, and is deleted 30 days after admissions close.
A post from Womafreesm or a personal invitation from a volunteer: an open evening about one short text, free to attend, reading ahead optional.
In a room of five you hear the same scene read by people whose lives differ from yours, and you speak too. Then each room shares one finding.
Four questions and a voice message. You can apply after an open evening or straight from this page. The program lead reviews every application.
Once your application is accepted, membership on any path confirms the place. An email brings all meeting dates and one commitment: a quote for each meeting.
You read in your language and meet the circle once a month. By the third book you know who will read the heroine differently, and you come for that.
For two weeks after the final meeting, you hold first claim on a place in the next season, with an active membership. You can skip a season and keep your priority.
Four questions and a voice message. The program lead reviews every application.
* Apply to The Order | /reading-order-application
Come to an open evening
Free for everyone: 75 minutes online, in English. The short text for the evening comes with your confirmation, and registration closes when the evening is full. The opening and closing are recorded, the rooms of five are not.
The How It Works page sets out the system in one place, together with the projects it contains.
Read How It Works
Where a book’s theme meets Womafreesm research, such as work, money, age, or how women are seen in hiring and in algorithms, a meeting can bring in a fact from that research. The book shows how a life is lived from inside. The research shows how often the same thing happens.
Reading Order is one of Womafreesm’s cultural projects, alongside Beyond Comparison and FreeWoman.
Twelve places taken is the signal for the first season to begin. An open evening is the easiest way to hear the conversation before you decide.
Check three things: the size of the group, whether the same people meet all season, and whether everyone gets to speak. Womafreesm Reading Order keeps a fixed circle of 12 to 16 readers for a five-month season and splits into threes during each 90-minute meeting. Its open evenings take place in rooms of five, so every person speaks.
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