READING LIST FOR COMPREHENSIIVE EXAMS IN GENDER
Day 2: Gender and the U.S. Welfare State
Gender and Poverty Policy
Origins of the Welfare State
Abramovitz, Mimi. Under attack, fighting back: Women and welfare in the United States.
New York: Monthly Review Press, 1996.
Pearce, Diana. "The Feminization of Poverty: Women, Work, and Welfare.” Urban and
Social Science Review 11 (1978): 28-36.
Skocpol, Theda. "Soldiers, Workers, and Mothers: Gendered Identities in Early U.S.
Social Policy." Contention: Debates in Society, Culture, and Science 2(3) (Spring
1993): 157-83.
Gordon, Linda. Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the Origins of Welfare. The
Free Press, 1994.
Effects on Families
Collins, Jane L., and Victoria Mayer. Both hands tied: Welfare reform and the race to the
bottom in the low-wage labor market. University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Edin, Kathryn, and Laura Lein. "Work, welfare, and single mothers' economic survival
strategies." American Sociological Review (1997): 253-266.
Hays, Sharon. 2004. Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gender and Family Policy
Overview
Vandepol, Ann. "Dependent children, child custody, and the mothers' pensions: The
transformation of state-family relations in the early 20th century." Social
Problems (1982): 221-235.
Bogenschneider Karen. 2000. “Has Family Policy Come of Age? A Decade Review of
the State of US Family Policy in the 1990s.” Journal of Marriage and the Family
62:1136-1159.
Furstenberg, Frank. Divorce and the American family. 1990. Annual Review of Sociology
16:379-403.
Gendered Foundations
Josephson, Jyl J. 1997. Gender, Families and State: Child Support Policy in the United
States. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Stack, Carol B. "Who owns the child? Divorce and child custody decisions in middleclass families." Social Problems (1976): 505-515.
Elizabeth, Vivienne, Nicola Gavey, and Julia Tolmie. "“… He’s Just Swapped His Fists
for the System” The Governance of Gender through Custody Law." Gender &
Society (2012): 0891243211434765.
Effects on Families
McLanahan, Sara, Annemette Sorensen, and Dorothy Watson. "Sex Differences in
Poverty: 1950-1980." SIGNS. 15: 102-122.
McLanahan, Sara. "Family Structure and the Reproduction of Poverty." American
Journal of Sociology. (January) 90:873-901.
Seltzer, Judith A. "Consequences of marital dissolution for children." Annual Review of
Sociology (1994): 235-266.
Thomson, Elizabeth, Thomas L. Hanson, and Sara S. McLanahan. "Family structure and
child well-being: Economic resources vs. parental behaviors." Social Forces 73.1
(1994): 221-242.
Pougnet, Erin, et al. "The Intergenerational Continuity of Fathers' Absence in a
Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Sample." Journal of Marriage and Family
74.3 (2012): 540-555.
Gender and Prison Policy
Gender and Prison
Haney, Lynn. 2010 Offending Women: Power, Punishment, and the Regulation of Desire.
(University of California Press).
Kruttschnitt, C., & Gartner, R. (2003). Women's imprisonment. Crime and Justice, 1-81.
Daly, Kathleen. "Rethinking judicial paternalism: Gender, work-family relations, and
sentencing." Gender & Society 3.1 (1989): 9-36.
Sabo, Don, Terry A. Kupers and Willie London. 2001. “Gender and the Politics of
Punishment.” Pp. 3-18 in Prison Masculinities, ed. Don Sabo, Terry A. Kupers
and Willie London. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Effects on Families
Comfort, Megan. 2008. Doing Time Together. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Desmond, Matthew, and Nicol Valdez. "Unpolicing the urban poor: Consequences of
third-party policing for inner-city women." American sociological review (2012):
0003122412470829.
Turney, Kristin, and Christopher Wildeman. "Redefining Relationships: Explaining the
Countervailing Consequences of Paternal Incarceration for Parenting." American
Sociological Review 78.6 (2013): 949-979.
Wakefield, Sara, and Christopher James Wildeman. Children of the prison boom: Mass
incarceration and the future of American inequality. Oxford University Press,
2014.
Braman, Don. “Families of Prisoners”, in Invisble Punishment: The Collateral
Consequences of Mass Imprisonment (Marc Mauer & Meda Chesney-Lind eds.,
2002).
Foster, Holly, and John Hagan. "Incarceration and intergenerational social exclusion."
(2007): 399-433.