Women's Work, Men's Property: The Origins of Gender and Class

To some a book on the "origins"of sexual inequality is absurd. Male dominance seems to them a universal, if not inevitable, phenomenon that has been with us since the dawn of our species. The essays in this volume offer differing perspectives on the development of sex-role differentiation and sexual inequality, but share a belief that these phenomena "did"have social origins, origins that must be sought in sociohistorical events and processes. In this way Stephanie Coontz and Peta Henderson introduce a book which fills a yawning gap in Marxist and feminist theory of recent years. "Women s Work, Men s Property"brings together specialist historical and anthropological skills of a group of American and French feminists to examine the origins of the sexual division of labor, the nature of pre-state kinship societies, the position of women in slave-based societies, and the specific forms taken by the oppression of women in archaic Greece. "Men s Work, Women s Property"will be welcomed by teachers and students of women s studies and anyone with an interest in the biological, psychological and historical roots of sexual inequality."