The Women, Gender and Development Reader

The Women, Gender and Development Reader is the definitive volume of literature dedicated to women in the development process. Now in a fully revised second edition, the editors expertly present the impacts of social, political and economic change by reviewing such topical issues as migration, persistent structural discrimination, the global recession, and climate change. Approached from a multidisciplinary perspective, the theoretical debates are vividly illustrated by an array of global case studies.

This now classic book, has been designed as a comprehensive reader, presenting the best of the now vast body of literature. The book is divided into five parts, incorporating readings from the leading experts and authorities in each field. The result is a unique and extensive discussion, a guide to the evolution of the field, and a vital point of reference for those studying or with a keen interest in women in the development process.

Nalini Visvanathan is an independent researcher living in the Washington, DC area. A native of India, her research and publications cover women's health in the population context, education and the empowerment of adolescent girls, women's movements and community-based participatory research. Her doctorate is in interdisciplinary communication with an emphasis on development studies.

Lynn Duggan, Professor of Labor Studies since 1997 and PhD economist, teaches at Indiana University Bloomington. She has written articles and book chapters on free trade and social policy, feminist comparative economic systems, family policy in East and West Germany, and reproductive rights in the Philippines.

Laurie Nisonoff, Professor of Economics, has taught economics, economic history and women's studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA, since 1974. She is an editor of the Review of Radical Political Economics, and served as the co-ordinator of the RRPE 6th Special Issue on Women, 'Women in the International Economy'. She has published alone and with Marilyn Dalsimer on women in China, and on the labour process.

Nan Wiegersma is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Fitchburg State College, Massachusetts. She has published numerous articles on land tenure, gender and development. Her article “Peasant Patriarchy and the Subversion of the Collective in Vietnam” was reprinted in the research anthology Gender and Development: Theoretical, Empirical and Practical Approaches, Volume I, Lourdes Beneria Ed. She is author of Vietnam: Peasant Land, Peasant Revolution and is coauthor (with Joseph Medley) of US Development Policies toward the Pacific Rim. She was the Women and Development Expert for the United Nations on a World Food Programme mission to Vietnam. She was also a coeditor of the first edition of The Women Gender and Development Reader.
Nan was a Fulbright Fellow in Nicaragua, studying women's work in export processing zones. The research from this study was published in Women in the Age of Economic Transformation, Aslanbegui et al. Eds. (1994) and Women in Globalization, Aguilar and Lacsamana Eds. (2004).