Description
Book SynopsisThis innovative text explores the unprecedented changes in the realms of politics, demography, economics, culture, knowledge, and kinship that women have brought about in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Global in reach, the book provides a comparative analysis of developments worldwide to show both progress as well as new tensions and forms of inequality that have emerged out of women's entry into politics, wage employment, education, and the production of culture. Beginning with suffrage and moving to participation in international movementssuch as anti-war, labor, and environmental rights activismMaria Bucur explores how women have transformed the operation of states and international institutions. She focuses on the radical demographic shifts since 1900 through the prism of changing practices in women's sexuality, from birth control practices to education. Examining the continuing economic gender gap around the world, Bucur highlights ways women have been both beneficiarie
Trade Review. . . . an impressive and concise piece of work that will prove useful to researchers and accessible to students studying gender in the twentieth century and beyond. Bucur’s narrative is simple but subversive: women are everywhere in history and our impact on the world is undeniable. * European History Quarterly *
Maria Bucur’s brilliant book not only challenges the masculine bias in popular history, it provides an essential international perspective on one of the most significant of social revolutions of our time: the global women’s movement. Her informed and uplifting work should be required reading for anyone disheartened by the growth of contemporary misogyny. Bucur reminds us that things can change despite the resistance of the most reactionary political opponents. -- Kristen R. Ghodsee, University of Pennsylvania
Maria Bucur’s bold, brave, broad-ranging, subversively feminist yet inevitably selective world history of women’s agency from 1900 to the present will provoke discussion and debate. This woman-focused interpretation should find a place on every intelligent person’s reading list. -- Karen Offen, Stanford University
The Century of Women is an energetic and fact-filled survey showing in detail women's many accomplishments over these decades but also presenting solid evidence of the many wrongs still to be righted. -- Bonnie Smith, Rutgers University
Encyclopedic in scope and bold in its conception, The Century of Women sets out to show that the changes of the twentieth century ‘can be fully grasped only by analyzing how women have been both the subject and object of these major shifts, from an unprecedented set of new rights to new cultural norms, and overall greater agency as a category of humans.’ The Century of Women succeeds admirably. It is a book every woman will want to read. Indeed, it is a book whose time has come! -- Sonya Michel, University of Maryland, College Park
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Abbreviations 1: Introduction: A Feminist History of the World since 1900 2: Politics 3: Population 4: Economics 5: Knowledge 6: Culture 7: Kinship: Into the Future Epilogue Bibliographic Essay Selected Bibliography
