Justice, Gender, and the Family

ANNOTATION

"...opens for debate the challenges to prevailing social institutions which come from taking women and children seriously."--Martha Minow, Professor

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Co-winner of the American Political Science Association's 1990 Victoria Schuck Award, given for the best book(s) published in 1989 on women and politics, this is the first feminist critique of modern political theory that in shows why and how in order to include all of us, theories of justice need to apply their standards to the family itself.

FROM THE CRITICS

Boston Globe

A tough, brilliant book...It doesn't let anybody get away with sexism.

Library Journal

Okin, also author of Women in Western Political Thought ( LJ 1/15/80), here is concerned with the lack of justice experienced by American women in both the public and private spheres. Lack of justice in the private sphere of gender-structured marriage leads to a lack of justice in the public sphere of the work place, the professions, and politics. Marriage makes women vulnerable due to the devaluation of human reproductive work and the persistence of a traditional division of labor within marriage. Divorce compounds the problem since it results in poverty for many women. This is a strong study of the contradictions in a democratic form of government, but Okin's recommendations lack analysis and are not fully linked to the political and economic arena. Recommended for undergraduate and graduate collections.-- Eleanor A. Schwab, South Dakota State Univ., Brookings

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

"The first sustained faminist account of distributive justice....a splendid book."  — Harper Collins - New Media