"The gendered analysis of political power, and of the women's movements that have contested it, has long concentrated on the Western developed world, In this wide-ranging re-evaluation, pertinent equally to development studies and to political sociology, Maxine Molyneux set out to redress this balance in the light of an analysis of Latin American women's movements and of their engagement with a range of states, liberal, authoritarian and revolutionary.

In a set of analyses that includes studies of Argentina, Nicaragua and Cube, together with comparative discussions of state socialism, women's movements and citizenship, she examines the complex, and persistent, interaction of states and women's movements and the diversity of responses which this has yielded.

Molyneux argues that no study of gender relations in the contemporary world, nor policy prescriptions for addressing gender inequality, can avoid an international, and comparative, perspective. the conclusion emerging from these cases, as relevant to the history of feminism as to its future, is a vindication of a radical, democratic perspective, one which seeks to transform social relations as it engages and contests political power."--BOOK JACKET.