Women and Politics: The Pursuit of Equality

by Lynne E. Ford

Women and Politics is a comprehensive examination of women's use of politics in pursuit of gender equality. How can demands for gender equality be reconciled with sex differences? Resolving this paradoxical question has proceeded along two the legal equality doctrine, which emphasizes gender neutrality, and the fairness doctrine, which recognizes differences between men and women. The text's clear analysis and presentation of theory and history helps students to think critically about the difficulties faced by women in politics, and about how public policies in education, labor and the economy, and family and fertility, impact gender equality. The fully-revised fourth edition explores new critical perspectives, recent political events, and current challenges to gender equality, including the 2016 presidential election and Hillary Clinton's candidacy, the fight for equal pay and paid leave, and the debate over reproductive rights and campus sexual assault. It also includes current scholarship on the intersections of race, class, and gender, and expanded coverage of minority women, women in the military, and conservative women. This text, and its two-path framework, is essential to understanding women's pursuit of equality via the political system.

466 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the only comprehensive textbook (not a reader) for Women and Politics that I have found. I don't love everything about it-- in particular, the internal organization of the chapters is sometimes poor, especially in the longer chapters-- but it does cover MOST of the areas you'd want it to. I also think the organizing principle of the book-- the "paradox of gender equality"-- and it's emphasis on the "separate spheres ideology" work well to bring together the many disparate issues my course needs to cover into an overall framework.