Persistence of Gender Inequality

Despite centuries of campaigning, women still earn less and have less power than men. Equality remains a goal not yet reached. In this incisive account of why this is the case, Mary Evans argues that optimistic narratives of progress and emancipation have served to obscure long-term structural inequalities between women and men, structural inequalities which are not only about gender but also about general social inequality. In widening the lenses on the persistence of gender inequality, Evans shows how in contemporary debates about social inequality gender is often ignored, implicitly side-lining critical aspects of relations between women and men. This engaging short book attempts to join up some of the dots in the ways that we think about both social and gender inequality, and offers a new perspective on a problem that still demands society s full attention.

Auteur

Mary Evans is Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Contenu

Acknowledgements vii Preface viii

1 What is Gender Inequality? 1

Making Inequality 5

What Has Changed? 10

Changing Conditions 12

2 Worlds of Inequality 23

Exploiting the Feminine 25

Problems at Work 30

Problems of Agency 35

Locations of Inequality 38

3 Problems of Subjectivity 47

Imagining the Female Body 48

Other Bodies 53

How the Body Matters 58

Questions of Order 61

4 Enter Feminism 76

Conditions for Feminism 76

A Secondary Sex 82

Changing Times 87

Unchanging Times 97

5 Making Gender Equality 120

The Rights of Women 122

The Limits of Liberalism 130

Notes 140

Bibliography 152

Index 166