Book excerpt: This is the first book to provide a comprehensive investigation of gender and the law in the United States. Deborah Rhode describes legal developments over the last two centuries against a background of historical and sociological changes in women's activities and attitudes toward these new developments. She shows the way cultural perceptions of gender influence and in turn are influenced by legal constructions, and what this complicated interaction implies about the possibility-or impossibility-of using law as a tool of social change. Table of Contents: Introduction Part One: Historical Frameworks 1. Natural Rights and Natural Roles Domesticity as Destiny The Emergence of a Feminist Movement Nineteenth-Century Legal Ideology: Separate and Unequal 2. The Fragmentation of Feminism and the Legalization of Difference The Postsuffrage Women's Movement Separate Spheres and Legal Thought Part Two: Equal Rights in Retrospect 3. Feminist Challenges and Legal Responses The Growth of the Contemporary Women's Movement Governmental Rejoinders Liberalism and Liberation 4. The Equal Rights Campaign Instrumental Claims Symbolic Underpinnings Political Strategies Requiems and Revivals 5. The Evolution of Discrimination Doctrine The Search for Standards Separate Spheres Revisited: Bona Fide Occupational Qualifications Definitions of Difference Part Three: Contemporary Issues 6. False Dichotomies Benign and Invidious Discrimination in Welfare Policy: Elderly Women and Social Security Special Treatment or Equal Treatment: Pregnancy, Maternal, and Caretaking Policy Public and Private: Social Welfare and Childcare Policies 7. Competing Perspectives on Family Policy Form and Substance: The Marital-Nonmarital Divide Lesbian-Gay Rights and Social Wrongs Equality and Equity in Divorce Reform Text and Subtext in Custody Adjudication 8. Equality in Form and Equality in Fact: Women and Work Occupational Inequality The Legal Response Employment Policy and Structural Change 9. Reproductive Freedom The Historical Legacy Abortion Adolescent Pregnancy Reproductive Technology 10. Sex and Violence Sexual Harassment Domestic Violence Rape Prostitution Pornography 11. Association and Assimilation Private Clubs and Public Values Education Athletics Different But Equal Conclusion: Principles and Priorities Differences over Difference Differences over Sameness Theory about Theory Legal Frameworks Notes Index Reviews of this book: Rhode's work is impressive in its scholarship and its range...a compelling account. --Josephine Shaw, International and Comparative Law Quarterly Reviews of this book: The definitive treatment of the American legal system's struggle to deal with issues pertaining to gender...The strength of Rhode's analysis, however, is not its historical aspect but its probing view of modern gender issues...The focus is always on the deeper forces that have led to gender disadvantage...There is much to be learned from reading this volume. --Victoria J. Dodd, Bimonthly Review of Law Books Reviews of this book: A comprensive journey through the history of law and gender...The book is important in a number of ways...[It] paints in stark, irrefutable colors the irrational prejudices that have served to justify legal determinations limiting equality...[I]t has the audacity to ask the law to turn on itself and work more justly. --Sheila James Kuehl, California Lawyer Reviews of this book: Encyclopedic.. . Thorough, carefully nuanced ... [Rhode] gives all sides their fair due on every issue she takes up... A valuable resource for many years to come. --Susan 0kin, Law and Social Inquiry Justice and Gender breaks the impasse created by legal and theoretical debates over 'sameness' and 'difference.' Deborah Rhode's brilliant analysis of gender and the law in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present argues persuasively for theories rooted in careful contextual analysis and for a legal emphasis on gender disadvantage rather than gender difference. This book offers a new vantage point from which to think about the role of law in building a just society. --Sarah M. Evans, University of Minnesota