Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Home is a scathing attack on the domesticity of women in the early 20th century. Her central argument, that "the economic independence and specialization of women is essential to the improvement of marriage, motherhood, domestic industry, and racial improvement" resonates in this work. Throughout, she maintains that the liberation of women--and of children and of men, for that matter--requires getting women out of the house, both practically and ideologically. AltaMira Press is proud to reprint this provocative work and introduce Charlotte Perkins Gilman to a...

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's His Religion and Hers is a brave critique of organized religion and the consequences that a male-constructed religion has on everyday life. She suggests that through the development of secular ethics, religion can be directed not to the anticipation of a mythical afterlife, but instead to the transformation of the present. Courageously questioning why 'neither religion, morality, nor ethics has made us good, ' she demonstrates the ways in which a male driven ideology has produced a religion focused on death and discourages any attention to the improvement of life on...

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's His Religion and Hers is a brave critique of organized religion and the consequences that a male-constructed religion has on everyday life. She suggests that through the development of secular ethics, religion can be directed not to the anticipation of a mythical afterlife, but instead to the transformation of the present. Courageously questioning why 'neither religion, morality, nor ethics has made us good, ' she demonstrates the ways in which a male driven ideology has produced a religion focused on death and discourages any attention to the improvement of life on...

This volume presents one of Mitchell's touchstone texts of neurasthenia--cultural critique as medical diagnosis. Fat and Blood was a best seller in its time and went through multiple printings and numerous editions. It fused the cultural critique of modern society and the inversion of gender roles with the medical analysis of this strange new ailment. Today we are likely to read it angrily, as it serves to enforce the most pernicious stereotypes abut women (and not so incidentally, about men)--stereotypes that have proved resilient obstacles to women's advancement. But Fat and Blood supports...

In Women in the Modern World, noted feminist and sociologist Mirra Komarovsky begins with a consideration of biology. Reflecting on these now-familiar arguments that the natural biological differences between women and men dictate different social roles, Komarovsky demolishes these arguments by carefully reviewing studies that find sex differences in cognitive abilities, achievement, and psychological predispositions. In successive chapters, Komarovsky explores how differential socialization produces the differences that we think we observe between women and men, and how gender inequality...

Noted sociologist and feminist Mirra Komarovsky interviewed 59 families between 1935-36 to study man's role as economic provider. The result is an unprecedented study of masculinity and depression and the effect of social institutions on the individual.

Human Work represents the first ground breaking analysis on the equal importance of work in the lives of men and women. Noted feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman maintains the notion that it was 'sexuo-economic oppression of women' and not women's biology that kept women from achieving in all areas of work. Accusing men of appropriating certain work as 'men's work' and masking the process as a biological locus rather than an exercise in power relations, Gilman asserts that men created an economic dependence that has prevented women from success in the workplace. Introduced by noted scholars...

Human Work represents the first ground breaking analysis on the equal importance of work in the lives of men and women. Noted feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman maintains the notion that it was "sexuo-economic oppression of women" and not women's biology that kept women from achieving in all areas of work. Accusing men of appropriating certain work as "men's work" and masking the process as a biological locus rather than an exercise in power relations, Gilman asserts that men created an economic dependence that has prevented women from success in the workplace. Introduced by noted scholars...

Away from the public eye, but from within the structures of stable and efficient organizations, women's groups have established nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to pursue feminist agendas. Feminist Organizations and Social Transformation in Latin America constitutes one of the first detailed analyses of the political and educational work of these organizations. Focusing on NGOs in the Dominican Republic and Peru, the book presents three case studies of feminist work, showing the careful balance they must navigate among satisfying basic needs, promoting legislation to address profound...

Jessie Bernard was one of the foremost early feminist sociologists and public intellectuals in women's studies. In The Jessie Bernard Reader, Michael S. Kimmel and Yasemin Besen have compiled her most intriguing and influential work on marriage, the family, sexuality and changing women's roles in the United States. Bernard's pioneering works bridged the gap between academic social science and public advocacy for gender equality. Her books were landmarks in demarcating the effects of the "separation of spheres." Among her most celebrated arguments was that couples experienced two different...