Thinking About Women: Sociological Perspectives on Sex and Gender, 8/E

Margaret  Andersen

ISBN-10:      0205578721

This text is a comprehensive review of feminist scholarship in the social sciences; it shows how gender operates in every aspect of society, and how the experiences of both men and women are created through social institutions.Thinking About Women is interdisciplinary in its coverage, yet grounded in sociological theory and research. Also, it integrates discussions of race, class, and sexuality to show how gender is not experienced in isolation.

As with every edition, the text is thoroughly updated. The list below highlights some of the new features.

Every new chapter (except Chapter 1) now includes three new boxed features. These features highlight key themes of the text: research, the media, and studies about men. The boxes are:

• A Focus on Research, in which a new empirical research study, appropriate to the chapter subject, is described.

Example (Chapter 6): a discussion of “opting out”–that is, are well-educated, middle-class women dropping out of the labor market to raise children?The media claim this is a strong trend, but is it? This box feature examines new sociological research on this topic.

• Media Matters, in which an empirical study examining some aspect of the media related to the chapter topic is presented.

Example (Chapter 9): a box featuring new research on violent images of rape on the Internet. This box also shows how Asian women are overrepresented in pornographic web sites.

• What About Men?, a box which features research examining some aspect of men’s lives that is related to the chapter topic.

Example (Chapter 4): a box describing the peer socialization of young boys in which homophobic insults reinforce social norms of masculinity

For a full list of changes, please visit www.pearsonhighered.com

"This book is so well done it makes Margaret L. Anderson an authority in Women’s Studies. It is logically structured, thorough in its discussion and inclusive of the most important themes in the contemporary literature. Anderson writes in a relaxed, engaging style that is highly readable yet is informative and well-researched."

Jeff Torlina

Utah Valley State College

"The main reason I adopted Andersen's text is because of her conceptualization of race, class, and gender as interlocking systems of power and privilege."

"I see Andersen’s text as a comprehensive introduction to feminist scholarship and research. It is extremely well written, current, empirically grounded, and, most importantly, very easy to read and exciting."

Daphne S. Cain

Louisiana State University 

"I use this text because it covers a broad range of social institutions, includes good demographic information and reader-friendly charts, graphs, etc. I also like that the text introduces higher-level concepts (like the dominance of scientific epistemology, the role of ideology, etc.) in a way that is accessible to lower division students."

Joy C. Honea

Montana State University-Billings

"The overall strength of this text is its use of the socioogical perspective and the wide range of topics covered that relate to women/families."

Sharon K. Araji

University of Alaska-Anchorage

"I adopted this text primarily because of its specific focus on the sociological investigation and theoretical framing of women's issues (as opposed to a treatment of gender in general)."

Susan L. Wortmann

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Professor Andersen is the Vice President of the American Sociological Association (ASA) and recipient of the ASA’s prestigious Jessie Bernard Award–given annually to someone whose work expands the horizons of sociology to include the study of women. She also received the 2004 Sociologists for Women in Society Feminist Lecturer Award and the 2008 Eastern Sociological Society Robin F. Williams Lecturer Award. She has received two teaching awards at the University of Delaware: the University Excellence in teaching Award and the College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teacher Award. She currently chairs the National Advisory Board for the Stanford University Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and is the former editor of Gender and Society.