In Pursuit of Equity
Price:
$19.95 (01)Description
In this volume, Alice Kessler-Harris explores the transformation of some of the United States' most significant social policies. Tracing changing ideals of fairness from the 1920s to the 1970s, she shows how a deeply embedded set of beliefs, or "gendered imagination" shaped seemingly neutral social legislation to limit the freedom and equality of women. Law and custom generally sought to protect women from exploitation, and sometimes from employment itself; but at the same time, they assigned the most important benefits to wage work. Most policy makers (even female ones) assumed from the beginning that women would not be breadwinners. Kessler-Harris shows how ideas about what was fair for men as well as women influenced old age and unemployment insurance, fair labor standards, Federal income tax policy, and the new discussion of women's rights that emerged after World War II. Only in the 1960s and 1970s did the gendered imagination begin to alter--yet the process is far from complete.Reviews
"Through her painstaking examination of major legislation, Alice Kessler-Harris creates a framework for understanding not only the past but also the struggles women face today."--The Women's Review of Books
"In Pursuit of Equity is a sensitive and illuminating exploration of the manifold ways in which gendered habits of mind shape social action. It is a contribution not just to the history of the past but to the history of the future." --Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
"Kessler-Harris's cautious optimism about our shared economic future is hard to resist."--Publishers Weekly
"Broad in scope and enriched by detailed research.... In Pursuit of Equity is a fine work, with an important and nuanced argument, the kind of book that forces one to rethink assumptions about gender, politics, citizenship, and the struggle for social justice."--Miriam Cohen, Evalyn Clark Professor of History, Vassar College, Business History Review
Product Details
384 pages; 23 halftones; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-515802-1ISBN10: 0-19-515802-4About the Author(s)
Alice Kessler-Harris is the R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History at Columbia University, where she also teaches in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. A leading advocate of women's rights in the United States, she has been a featured speaker at a special White House symposium and an expert guest on the PBS documentary "The Measured Century." She is the author of Out to Work, A Woman's Wage, and Women Have Always Worked.
