Few historians have contributed more to our understanding of the history of women, and women''s effect on history, than Alice Kessler-Harris. Author of the classic Out to Work, she is one of the country''s leading scholars of gender, the economy, and public policy. In this volume, Kessler-Harris pierces the skin of arguments and legislation to grasp the preconceptions that have shaped the experience of women: a "gendered imagination" that has defined what men and women alike think of as fair and desirable. In this brilliant account that traces social policy from the New Deal to the 1970s, she shows how a deeply embedded set of beliefs has distorted seemingly neutral social legislation to further limit the freedom and equality of women. Government rules generally sought to protect women from exploitation, even from employment itself; but at the same time, they attached the most important benefits to wage work. To be a real citizen, one must earn--and most policymakers (even female ones) assumed from the beginning that women were not, and should not be breadwinners. Kessler-Harris traces the impact of this gender bias in the New Deal programs of Social Security, unemployment insurance, and fair labor standards, in Federal income tax policy, and the new discussion of women''s rights that emerged after World War II. "For generations," she writes, "American women lacked not merely the practice, but frequently the idea of individual economic freedom." Only in the 1960s and ''70s did old assumptions begin to break down--yet the process is far from complete. Even today, with women closer to full economic citizenship than ever before, Kessler-Harris''s insights offer a keen new understanding of the issues that dominate the headlines, from the marriage penalty in the tax code to the glass ceiling in corporate America.
Industry 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
"No one has yet done what Alice Kessler-Harris has in her newest book In Pursuit of Equity, reaching beyond [T.H.] Marshall and his critics to suggest a new concept, economic citizenship. In this history of how women have been treated in employment, tax, and welfare policy, Kessler-Harris--arguably the leading historian of women's labor in the United States--synthesizes several decades of feminist analysis to produce a holistic conception of what full
citizenship for women might entail. In lucid prose with vivid (and sometimes comic) illustrations of the snarled thinking that results from conceiving of women as dependents--rather than equal in heading
families--she offers a vision of how we can move toward greater democracy. In the process, she also shows us what we are up against. Her book illustrates brilliantly how assumptions about appropriate gender roles are built into all aspects of policy."--Linda Gordon, The Nation
"A vigorous historical analysis of the 20-century U.S. social policies that produced differential access to resources for men and women....Kessler-Harris succeeds in showing how gender has shaped the rules by which we live, how gendered habits of mind have been inscribed in social policies that continue to frame our lives, and how, once these habits are embedded in the legislative, judicial, and policymaking mechanisms of society, only such a critical,
penetrating analysis as this can challenge them and begin to advance the cause of modern feminism."--Library Journal
"In Pursuit of Equity is the latest testament to Alice Kessler-Harris' original scholarship. Professor Kessler-Harris brilliantly documents the often subtle ways that women have been historically denied economic citizenship in the United States. This book enhanced my awareness of the impact of what she calls 'the gendered imagination' in the shaping of policies that lead to enduring forms of economic inequality."--William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and
Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University, author of When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor
"Alice Kessler-Harris's brilliant research and analyses create a heartening, galvanizing alternative to these cruel times. Armed by this splendid book, we have the tools finally to move beyond America's disgraceful economic traditions of employment injustice, rampant poverty, contempt for women--and on to gender equity, empowerment, and dignity for all."--Blanche Wiesen Cook, University Distinguished Professor, John Jay College and The Graduate Center, CUNY,
author of Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884-1933 and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Defining Years, 1933-1938
"In one of the most brilliant books of recent years, Alice Kessler-Harris explains how modern feminism has been grounded in the changing meanings of work. Formidable research and eloquent writing make it clear why gender difference as a rationale for distributing jobs, taxes, and entitlements came to a screeching crash in our own lifetimes. This is a book for everyone who cares about social policy and democratic citizenship."--Linda K. Kerber, University of
Iowa, author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship
"Anyone interested in envisioning what 'liberty and justice for all' might really look like will benefit from learning this book's robust concept of economic citizenship. The long tradition of sex differentiation in law and policy--and the forces enabling it to be re-seen as sex discrimination--gain stunning clarity through Kessler-Harris's measured, probing, insistent analysis. She reopens assumptions about what is 'normal' and what is 'in the public
interest' in matters of gender and work and family."--Nancy Cott, Sterling Professor of History and American Studies at Yale, and author of Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation
"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
