Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do about It » (1st Edition)

Joan Williams is co-director of the Project on Gender, Work and Family at the American University Law School, where she is a professor. She lives in Washington, D.C.

In Unbending Gender, Joan Williams shows that workplaces are designed around men's bodies and life patterns in ways that discriminate against women, and that the work/family system that results is terrible for men, worse for women, and worst of all for children. She proposes a set of practical policies and legal initiatives to reorganize the two realms of work in employment and households--so that men and women can lead healthier and more productive personal and work lives. Williams introduces a new 'reconstructive' feminism that places class, race, and gender conflicts among women at center stage. Her solution is an inclusive, family-friendly feminism that supports both mothers and fathers as caregivers and as workers.