Gender-Class Equality in Political Economies

In this truly unique text, Lynn Prince Cooke shows how gender and class inequalities intersect all depending on the nature of welfare state policy. It fills a massive void by adding a gender dimension to class analysis, and a class dimension to research on gender inequalities. It should be obligatory reading in courses on social policy, gender, and social stratification.

-Gosta Esping-Andersen, Sociology, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain

Gender-Class Equality in Political Economies represents comparative scholarship at its best. The book will be invaluable as an example of best-practice research for students in gender, family, state and inequality courses, as well as providing a wealth of valuable historical and current information for scholars and anyone interested in understanding class and gender inequality in comparative context.

-Janeen Baxter, School of Social Science, University of Queensland, Australia

Cooke no longer 'adds gender and stirs' it into the customary male-centered story of stratification, but rethinks the fundamental processes of inequality as being simultaneously about production and reproduction. Cooke succeeds so well in placing reproduction in an integrated and important position in the overall story of stratification that one might wonder how the old-style production-only accounts ever seemed plausible.

-Myra Marx Ferree, Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA

Two questions constitute the frontier of research on gender and the state: First, how do state policies shape gender inequalities and, second, how are gender and class inequalities intertwined? Lynn Cooke blends historical and comparative analyses to tackle both questions. The result is a lively book brimming with policy implications.

-Jane Gornick, Political Science and Sociology, City University of New York Graduate Center, USA

This interesting, useful, and provocative book is unique in using historical, longitudinal, and comparative cross-cultural data to provide a new model for understanding persistent gender inequalities. I look forward to drawing on the theoretical and methodological approach, and substantive material in teaching on gender, families and social policy.

-Janet Holland, Social Research, London South Bank University, UK

A myriad of detailed, painstakingly collected historical facts are combined with complex arguments and integrated accounts of social policy origins and developments across six societies on three continents in this insightful book.

-Sonja Drobnic, University of Hamburg, in American Journal of Sociology

[Gender-Class Equality in Political Economies] goes beyond the narrower focus taken by the majority of comparative studies in political economy and opens our perspective to the broader web of class and gender inequities.

-Angelika Von Wahl, Lafayette College, in Gender & Society

Scholars interested in both the complexity and the resilience of inequalities in contemporary societies will find much food for thought in this broadly comparative investigation by Lynn Prince Cooke.

-Mary Beth Mills, Colby College, in Contemporary Sociology