In our fast-paced world of technology and conveniences, the biological origins of women's inequality can be forgotten. This book offers a richer understanding of gender inequality by explaining a key cause-women's reproductive and lactation patterns. Until about 1900, infants nursed every fifteen minutes on average for two years because very frequent suckling prevented pregnancy. The practice evolved because it maximized infant survival. If a forager child was born before its older sibling could take part in the daily food search, the older one died. This practice persisted until the modern era because until after the discovery of the germ theory of disease, human milk was the only food certain to be unspoiled. Lactation patterns excluded women from the activities that led to political leadership. During the twentieth century the ancient mode declined and women entered the labor market en masse. Joan Huber challenges feminists toward a richer understanding of biological origins of inequality-knowledge that can help women achieve greater equality today.
The development of cross-national research attempts to a much-needed global perspective on sociological research. Its adherents overcome national, cultural, logistic and linguistic barriers in the attempt to provide truly comparative information on the human condition. This volume, stemming from the plenary sessions of the 1987 American Sociological Association annual meeting and edited by past president Melvin Kohn, presents the cutting edge of cross-national research. Its distinguished contributors from nine countries describe the theoretical possibilities and limits of this kind of endeavour, consider the difficulties of its implementation, and present a range of studies ranging from two-nation comparisons to truly global ones, that are
Theoretical models for understanding AIDS in relation to society and the general question of high risk sexual practice, often the means of transmission of the virus, are among the issues discussed in this volume. It also explores the social context of policy and programme development in fighting AIDS - organizing drug users, forced blood-testing and family support groups, for example. Versions of these articles were originally delivered as papers in thematic sessions of the 1989 American Sociological Association annual meeting. Collectively, they represent the cutting edge of sociological work on the AIDS crisis.
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