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Sylvia Chant and Nikki Craske; Latin American Bureau, 2003, London; £15.99ISBN: 1-8899365-53-2, (PBK)
Chant and Craske have produced a comprehensive overview of gender issues in Latin America, which spans the past 50 years and includes discussion of topics ranging from politics and legislation, to sexuality, ageing, health, migration and employment.
Overall, the analysis focuses on how far and in what ways gender inequalities have changed over the past 50 years and considers whether gender is a more important basis for inequality than other axes of difference such as class, 'race' or sexuality. In many ways, the situation of women has visibly improved across the region, there are now more women involved in formal politics, gender gaps are closing in education and in levels of employment yet, as the study reveals, the reality is far more complex. Each chapter seeks to review these overarching questions through an in-depth discussion of a different sector and to highlight the policy implications of the current situation.
Given the region's shared history of conquest and colonization by the Spanish and Portuguese, the authors argue that power relations were assigned in sexualized and racialized forms that continue to have implications for women and men's gender roles and sexuality...