1st Edition
Complex Inequality Gender, Class and Race in the New Economy
By Leslie McCall
Copyright 2001
254 Pages
15 Color Illustrations
by
Routledge
The American economy is in good shape: profits are soaring, employment is expanding, and technological advances abound. Yet inequality between genders and among races still exists. In Complex Inequality, Leslie McCall sifts through the complexities surrounding wage differences and economic restructuring to provide an important new understanding of the differences gender, race, and class make in inequality. McCall's vision of inequality will offer a new way to approach and address the complexities of inequality.
List of Tables List of Figures Preface Introduction 1. Restructuring Inequalities: A Gender, Class, and Race Perspective Part I 2. Configurations of Inequality: Intersections of Gender, Class, and Race 3. Industrial and Postindustrial Configurations of Inequality: Detroit and Dallas Part II 4. Breaking the Connection: Occupational Gender Segregation and the Gender Wage Gap 5. The Difference Class Makes: Gender Wage Inequality Among the College and Non-College Educated 6. The Difference Gender Makes: Wage Inequality Among Women and Men Conclusion7. The History and Politics of Inequality Reconsidered Technical Appendix References
Biography
Leslie McCall is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University.
"Combining rigorous quantitative analysis with detailed discussion of the implications for public policy, Leslie McCall shows that gender, class, and racial inequalities interact and intersect in a variety of configurations. Her careful comparative analysis of local labor markets exposes the ways in which the dynamics of the global economic restructuring can play out differently, depending on the characteristics of the local economy. She shows not only that gender has been given insufficient attention by students of economic inequality, who have incorrectly assumed that the same dynamics shape inequality among men and among women, but also that the traditional emphasis of gender scholars on job segregation downplays the rapidly growing inequalities within the female labor market." -- Ruth Milkman, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
"How do we understand the new inequality? Leslie McCall's wonderful new book uses variation between geographical areas in the U.S. to uncover structural sources of inequalities by gender, race, and educational classes...Seldom are rigorous quantitative analysis and the 'big picture' tied together so well." -- Paula England, Professor of Population Studies, University of Pennsylvania
"Complex Inequality documents the impact of economic restructuring on the economic realities of people's lives. In an important advance over other studies, Leslie McCall shows that restructuring's effects differ for people, depending on their class, race, and gender inequality. This exciting work is of enormous importance for social scientists and policy makers." -- Barbara Reskin, Professor of Sociology, Harvard University
"By locating the question of inequality at the intersection of variables that are not usually brought together, Leslie McCall unpacks its often complex genesis. She shows us when and how class, gender, and race might neutralize or, on the contrary, amplify, each other's impacts on inequality. Must reading for anyone interested in the subject." -- Saskia Sassen author of The Global City
"This book investigates how race, gender, andclass differences contribute to wage inequality in the present-day US." -- Sociological Abstracts
"Pathbreaking...McCall's analyses provide powerful confirmation for multidimensional understandings of social stratification." -- American Journal of Sociology
