Doing Gender, Doing Difference: Inequality, Power, and Institutional Change

“Doing Gender, Doing Difference is a fascinating and coherent collection showing the development, spanning 25 years, of theorizing about the social construction of gender and other inequalities. The book will be essential reading for scholars coping with the theoretical difficulties of bringing together analyses of gender, race, and class.” — Joan Acker, author of DoingComparable Worth: Gender, Class, and Pay Equity
“Doing Gender, Doing Difference is engaging and thought-provoking. Fenstermaker and West offer an inspiring model of how theory-building might and should proceed, through dialogue with other scholars and creative empirical work.” — Evelyn Nakano Glenn, author of Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped AmericanCitizenship and Labor
“Doing Gender, Doing Difference is a major contribution to the gender field. Fenstermaker and West superbly integrate classic conceptual works on gender as an accomplishment with new evidence and theorizing on gender and difference.” — Maxine Baca Zinn, author of Diversityin Families
“Over a decade ago, the argument that gender is a matter of active ‘doing’ rather than passive ‘being’ opened fresh perspectives and lines of research. In this wonderfully informative collection, two key theorists reflect upon and further extend the intellectual reach of this approach…Important and compelling.” — Barrie Thorne, author of Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School

Sarah Fenstermaker is Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is the author of The Gender Factory: TheApportionment of Work in America. Candace West is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.