In this article, we advance a new understanding of “difference” as an ongoing interactional accomplishment. Calling on the authors' earlier reconceptualization of gender, they develop the further implications of this perspective for the relationships among gender, race, and class. The authors argue that, despite significant differences in their characteristics and outcomes, gender, race, and class are comparable as mechanisms for producing social inequality.

In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals as well as those African-American women outside academe. She not only provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde, but she shows the importance of self-defined knowledge for group empowerment. In the tenth anniversary edition of this award-winning work, Patricia Hill Collins expands the basic arguments of the first edition by adding (...) several important new themes. A new discussion of heterosexism as a system of power, an expanded treatment of images of Black womanhood, U.S. Black feminism's connections to Black Diasporic feminisms, and more attention to the importance of social class and nationalism all appear in the new edition. In addition, the new edition includes recent developments in black cultural studies, especially black popular culture, as well as recent events and trends such as the Anita Hill hearings and the backlash against affirmative action. (shrink)

Providing a broad base of essential knowledge critical to undergraduate students, Situating Feminism will also inspire new directions in critical thought and theoretical advancement for academics and professionals in the areas of women's and culture studies, political science, social work, communication, sociology, and psychology.

This revised edition includes a New Intergalactic Introduction by the Author. Mary Daly's New Intergalactic Introduction explores her process as a Crafty Pirate on the Journey of Writing Gyn/Ecology and reveals the autobiographical context of this "Thunderbolt of Rage" that she first hurled against the patriarchs in 1979 and no hurls again in the Re-Surging Movement of Radical Feminism in the Be-Dazzling Nineties.

Many employers assess their workforces with gendered and racialized imagery that can put groups of workers and applicants at a disadvantage in the labor market. Based on 78 interviews with white employers in Atlanta, the author reveals that some employers use a complex but widely shared stereo-type of Black working-class women as single mothers to typify members of this group. These employers use this single-mother image to explain why they think Black women are poor workers, why they think Black women (...) are reliable workers, and why they think Blacks are poorly prepared for the labor market. In focusing on these white employers' claims, the author concentrates not on the well-documented out-comes of labor market discrimination, such as differential rates of pay and promotion, but on how employers construct and use the images that may from the basis of it. This is especially relevant amid current attacks on affirmative action programs. (shrink)

Women’s status in the Western world has improved enormously, but the revolution that would make women and men truly equal has not yet occurred. I argue that the reason is that gender divisions still deeply bifurcate the structure of modern society. Feminists want women and men to be equal, but few talk about doing away with gender divisions altogether. From a social constructionist structural gender perspective, it is the ubiquitous division of people into two unequally valued categories that undergirds the (...) continually reappearing instances of gender inequality. I argue that it is this gendering that needs to be challenged by feminists, with the long-term goal of doing away with binary gender divisions altogether. To this end, I call for a feminist degendering movement. (shrink)