Abstract
In the last half century, the movement for gender equality has faced setbacks in accomplishing its ultimate goal. However, a more recent reckoning has come to fruition—particularly among men and women in the United States—and signals a change of pace in the demand for equality. A case study of the U.S. entertainment industry reveals a turn of the tide in renouncing the silence surrounding sexual harassment and assault. Charged examples, such as the #MeToo movement and the newly launched #TIMESUP Legal Defense Fund, permeate public discourse primarily through social media and make room for larger conversations on gender inequity. Published just months before the pivotal allegations of Harvey Weinstein in Hollywood, Gender in the Twenty-First Century: The Stalled Revolution and the Road to Equality precludes such contemporary dialogues in mainstream media and offers an academic lens for understanding the pervasiveness of gender stratification in society. Wielding a call-to-action tone, this anthology positions itself as a valuable handbook in the social sciences, a useful policy reference, and a worthwhile teaching tool.
From the outset, Davis, Winslow, and Maume strategically layer contributors’ research in a way that appeals to a wide audience. Gender is primarily established at the individual, interpersonal, and institutional levels, and secondly, policy recommendations are delineated at the local, organizational, and governmental levels. This twofold structure successfully positions each chapter within a sort of grid, defined by the axes of gender’s social context and a potential arena for policy change. Such visualization is useful in identifying, for example, the multilevel conflicts that have emerged in changing gender and work institutions through the “new economy” (p. 15). The anthology’s effective conceptual groundwork is comprehensive across audiences—from scholar, to policymaker, to student—because its reinstating of concepts throughout allows for movement across topics while maintaining a continuity of general ideas. Organized by social institutions, the range of topics explored in the collection is notably diverse, but it is certainly not exhaustive; in fact, the exclusion of modern institutions such as social media and the Internet is problematic, given an increased academic interest in these areas and the recent advances of the gender equality movement through online mediums.
With a uniquely narrative format, each chapter begins with a short vignette to personalize the research that follows, which makes this edition especially helpful and relatable as an introductory text for budding scholars. For example, chapter four’s analysis of interviews with black men employ vignettes that function as stories, narrating the role of intersecting identities in the workplace. They succinctly unpack race, gender, and class, shedding light on who is marginalized, who attains mobility, and who maintains privilege. Likewise, the use of abridged case studies across chapters establishes a methodological focus that lends itself to a stronger application of theory and a clearer understanding of potential policy directions.
Notions of power, intersectionality, and stratification populate the theoretical landscape of this anthology, especially among topics related to gendered wages, health care, political power, and corporate representation. These concepts set the footing for an academically rich analysis of gender in both qualitative and quantitative research studies. The findings of Lin and Hinge related to intersectionality, social standing, and access to health, for example, stress the importance of “a multiplicative approach in research on health inequalities” (p. 181). Regarding the inclusion of Hispanic populations in corporate America, the work of Garcia and Lopez makes a case for diversity (p. 151), noting that representation is essential to the disruption of stratification. In these examples and many others, a successful operationalization of theories related to race, gender, class, and sexuality demonstrates the need for future works that follow suit.
Overall, despite its commitment to including groundbreaking gender research rooted in highly regarded social theory, this collection’s stringent focus on identifying pathways for policy change tends to disregard the overwhelming forms of oppression in contemporary society. For an educator teaching this text in the classroom, it is essential that students also participate in equally rich discussions of social realities such as systemic racism, imperialism, and Christonormativity, to name a few. These forces, though surmountable through governmental or policy change, are not to be ignored in discussions of research; doing so risks obscuring or forgetting the power dynamics at stake in a once “stalled” revolution that has indeed resumed.