The Women, Gender and Development Reader/Nalini Visvanathan, Lynn Duggan, Laurie Nisonoff and Nan Wiegersma. Dhaka, University Press Limited, 1997, 396 p., $28. ISBN 984-05-1399-X.

Contents: Preface. General introduction/Nalini Visvanathan. 1. Development as history and process/Sue Ellen Charlton. I. Theories of Women, Gender and Development: 2. The making of a field : advocates, practitioners and scholars/Irene Tinker. 3. Accumulation, reproduction and women’s role in economic development: Boserup revisited/Lourdes Beneria and Gita Sen. 4. Gender and development/Kate Young. 5. Women, the environment and sustainable development/R. Braidotti, E. Charkiewicz, S. Hausler and S. Wieringa. 6. Women in nature/Vandana Shiva. 7. The gender and environment debate : lessons from India/Bina Agarwal. 8. The African context ; women in the political economy/Margaret Snyder and Mary Tadesse. 9. Under Western eyes: feminist scholarship and colonial discourses/Chandra Talpade Mohanty. 10. Bargaining with patriarchy/Deniz Kandiyoti. II. Households and Families: 11. Accounting for women’s work : the progress of two decades/Lourdes Beneria. 12. Daughters, decisions and dominations: an empirical and conceptual critique of household strategies/Diane L. Wolf. 13. The Hidden roots of the African food problem: looking within the rural household/Jeanne Koopman. 14. Subordination and sexual control: a comparative view of the control of women/Gita Sen. 15. Wife abuse in the context of development and change: a Chinese (Taiwanese) case/Rita Gallin. 16. Single-parent families: choice or constraint? The formation of female-headed households in Mexican Shanty Towns/Sylvia Chant.

III. Women in the Global Economy: 17. The subordination of women and the internationalization of factory production/Diane Elson and Ruth Pearson. 18. Maquiladoras : the view from the inside/Maria Patricia Fernandez-Kelly. 19. Capitalism, imperialism and patriarchy: the Dilemma of Third World women workers in multinational factories/Linda Y.C. Lim. 20. Women in the informal labor sector: the case of Mexico city/Lourdes Arizpe. 21. Deindustrialization and the growth of women’s economic associations and networks in urban Tanzania/Aili Mari Tripp. IV. International Women in Social Transformation: 22. Impact of the economic crisis on poor women and their households/Carmen Diana Deere, Helen Safa and Peggy Antrobus. 23. Ghana: women in the public and informal sectors under the economic recovery programme/Takyiwaa Manub. 24. Abuses against women and girls under the one-child family plan in the people’s Republic of China/Marlyn Dalsimer and Laurie Nisonoff. 25. Women, population and the environment: whose consensus, Whose empowerment?/Betsy Hartmann. 26. AIDS ; women are not just transmitters/Claudia Garcia Moreno. 27. Gender, nation and colonialism: lessons from the Philippines/Delia D. Aguilar. 28. Women, marriage and the state in Iran/Haleh Afshar. 29. Return to the Veil: personal strategy and public participation in Egypt/Homa Hoodfar. 30. Capitalism and socialism: some feminist questions/Lourdes Beneria. 31. Downwardly mobile: women in the decollectivization of east European agriculture/Mieke Meurs. V. Women Organizing Themselves for Change: 32. Planning from a gender perspective/Kate Young. 33. Women as political actors in rural Puerto Rico: continuity and change/Ida Susser. 34. Women and the labour movement in South Korea/Seung-Kyung Kim. 35. SEWA: women in movement/Kalima Rose. Tables. Figures.

"Third World women were long the undervalued and ignored actors in the development process but are now recognized by scholars, practitioners and policy makers alike as playing a critical role. As the first comprehensive reader for undergraduates and development practitioners, this book presents the best of the now vast body of literature that has grown up alongside this acknowledgement.

"With a guide to further reading at the end of each chapter, this book provides a foundation for any serious student of women in the development process." (jacket)

[Laurie Nisonoff is Professor of Economics at Hampshire College in Amherst Massachusetts, USA.

Nan Wiegersma is Professor of Economics at Fitchburg State College, Fitchburg, Massachusetts.]

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