Lori Kenschaft

Gender Inequality in Our Changing World: A Comparative Approach focuses on the contemporary United States but places it in historical and global context. Written for sociology of gender courses, this textbook identifies conditions that encourage greater or lesser gender inequality, explains how gender and gender inequality change over time, and explores how gender intersects with other hierarchies, especially those related to race, social class, and sexual identity. The authors integrate historical and international materials as they help students think both theoretically and empirically about the causes and consequences of gender inequality, both in their own lives and in the lives of others worldwide.

Gender Inequality in Our Changing World: A Comparative Approach focuses on the contemporary United States but places it in historical and global context. Written for sociology of gender courses, this textbook identifies conditions that encourage greater or lesser gender inequality, explains how gender and gender inequality change over time, and explores how gender intersects with other hierarchies, especially those related to race, social class, and sexual identity. The authors integrate historical and international materials as they help students think both theoretically and empirically about the causes and consequences of gender inequality, both in their own lives and in the lives of others worldwide.

At age twenty-six Alice Freeman became the world's first female college president (at Wellesley College). Before going on to become the first Dean of Women at the University of Chicago, she married Harvard professor of philosophy George Herbert Palmer in 1887. A generation before most educated women dreamt of combining marriage and professional work, the couple forged a new type of union that encouraged satisfying careers for both partners. Drawing on more than a thousand letters, Lori Kenschaft traces the couple’s long and ever-changing relationship. Her multifaceted study examines their decision to marry, the dynamics of their relationship, and their understanding of marriage. As their relationship matured, their life-shaping decisions reflected and revealed their feelings about work, love, sex, equality, and the purposes of education. A beautifully written portrait of an extraordinary marriage, Reinventing Marriage uses the personal experiences of two remarkable individuals to illuminate the complexities and contradictions at the roots of modern ideals about marriage.