Researched and written by a collaborative team of Americans and Russians, "Marriages in Russia" explores the myths and realities of how the first years of market transformation have affected Russian family life. The research project, in which 2418 individual interviews of randomly sampled heterosexual couples are used, was initiated to determine if the relationships between gender attitudes and the relative social statuses of spouses--based on such factors as education, occupational prestige, and income--influence the marital quality spouses experience. Whether these variables are linked to domestic violence, as data show they are in the United States, is also examined. The results are surprising in that they often contradict general beliefs about Russian gender attitudes and gender attributes, and the analysis of these findings is ultimately a fascinating look at the post-Cold War realities of family life in Russia.

Dana Vannoy's Gender Mosaics is a collection of original essays written expressly for this volume by eminent gender scholars. The essays represent a rich variety of writing styles, mixing theory, data, personal experience, and expressions of politics and policy. The essays are clearly written and accessible for undergraduates. While the focus of this volume centers on relations between women and men, the diversity of experience provided by the intersection of race, ethnicity, class, and sexual orientation is also taken into account.
Gender Mosaics reflects a sociological point of view on gender. It emphasizes both the social construction of gender in everyday interactions and gender as a stratification system built into social institutions. Through these readings, students come to see how gendered behavior results in a stratification system in which men and women wield unequal power and opportunity for self-determination, both in personal relationships and in the social organizations of society.
Thought-provoking introductions to each article guide the student and ease instruction by identifying and explaining central issues, key concepts, and relationships among topics. This provides internal cohesiveness and structure to the selections. Discussion questions follow.