"It hurts to be beautiful" has been a cliche for centuries. What has been far less appreciated is how much it hurts not to be beautiful. The Beauty Bias explores our cultural preoccupation with attractiveness, the costs it imposes, and the responses it demands.
Beauty may be only skin deep, but the damages associated with its absence go much deeper. Unattractive individuals are less likely to be hired and promoted, and are assumed less likely to have desirable traits, such as goodness, kindness, and honesty. Three quarters of women consider appearance important to their self image and over a third rank it as the most important factor.
Although appearance can be a significant source of pleasure, its price can also be excessive, not only in time and money, but also in physical and psychological health. Our annual global investment in appearance totals close to $200 billion. Many individuals experience stigma, discrimination, and related difficulties, such as eating disorders, depression, and risky dieting and cosmetic procedures. Women bear a vastly disproportionate share of these costs, in part because they face standards more exacting than those for men, and pay greater penalties for falling short.
The Beauty Bias explores the social, biological, market, and media forces that have contributed to appearance-related problems, as well as feminism's difficulties in confronting them. The book also reviews why it matters. Appearance-related bias infringes fundamental rights, compromises merit principles, reinforces debilitating stereotypes, and compounds the disadvantages of race, class, and gender. Yet only one state and a half dozen localities explicitly prohibit such discrimination. The Beauty Bias provides the first systematic survey of how appearance laws work in practice, and a compelling argument for extending their reach. The book offers case histories of invidious discrimination and a plausible legal and political strategy for addressing them. Our prejudices run deep, but we can do far more to promote realistic and healthy images of attractiveness, and to reduce the price of their pursuit.

Why are women so dramatically underrepresented in formal leadership positions-and what can be done to improve the situation? This unique collection takes up these questions in the crucial practical concepts of law, politics, and business-the arenas in which women's leadership has the most public influence. Bridging the worlds of theory and practice, the essays in this collection bring new insights to long-standing questions about the difference gender difference makes, both in access to leadership and in its exercise. The contributors to this collection represent some of the nation's most distinguished women leaders and most respected scholars on women and leadership, and reflect a distinctive array of perspectives and backgrounds. Among others, they include former Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder; former NOW president Patricia Ireland; the Right Honorable Kim Campbell, former prime minister of Canada; and Judith Resnik, the Arthur Liman Professor of Law, Yale Law School. Written in accessible, lively prose, and informed by a wealth of scholarship and personal experience, this collection should appeal to a broad audience.

"Equal Justice Under Law." This promise appears on courthouse doors across the land. But it by no means describes what goes on inside them. Equal access to justice is one of America's most proudly proclaimed principles. And one of its most frequently violated. In theory, the United States is deeply committed to individual rights. Yet few Americans can afford the legal representation necessary to exercise them. Only one percent of the nation's lawyers serve our poorest citizens, translating to one lawyer for every 1,400 poor people. The nation with the world's greatest concentration of lawyers has one of the least accessible systems of justice. Written by America's leading expert on legal ethics, Access to Justice vividly chronicles the wide gap between the lofty aspirations and harsh realities of American justice. As Deborah L. Rhode demonstrates, America is overlawyered and underrepresented: there is too much law for those who can afford it and too little for everyone else. Although indigent defendants are entitled to legal representation, what satisfies that standard is an affront to the civilized world, and especially shameful for a nation that considers itself a world leader in human rights. Convictions are regularly upheld when lawyers are asleep, on drugs, mentally incapacitated, or even parking their car during the prosecution's case. The justice system is not only inaccessible for the poor; it is increasingly out of reach for the American middle class as well. Rhode's analysis also includes on the first comprehensive national study of lawyers' charitable pro bono work ever conducted, encompassing some 3,000 attorneys. The average lawyer, she finds, contributes less than half an hour a week and fifty cents a day in support of representation for those who cannot afford it. Access to Justice avoids both simplistic lawyer-bashing and liberal lament. Rhode outlines what could and should be done to curb frivolous litigation, but focuses her attention squarely on the far greater problem of unnecessary expense and unaffordable remedies. A scathing indictment of America's legal status quo, Access to Justice presents no mere manifesto but a reasoned and realistic agenda for lasting reform.

American women fare worse than men on virtually every major dimension of social status, financial wellbeing, and physical safety. Sexual violence remains common, and reproductive rights are by no means secure. Women assume disproportionate burdens in the home and pay a heavy price in the workplace. Yet these issues are not political priorities, and worse, there is a lack of consensus that there still is a serious problem, or at least one that women have any reason or capacity to address. This 'no problem' problem helps explain why women fail to mobilize around issues that materially affect the quality of their lives. Why is this, why does it matter, and how can we best respond? What Women Want focuses on the policy agenda for women. Deborah L. Rhode, one of the nation's leading scholars on women and law, brings to the discussion a broad array of interdisciplinary research as well as interviews with heads of leading women's organizations. Key questions addressed include whether the women's movement is stalled. What are the major obstacles it confronts? What are its key priorities and what strategies might advance them? In addressing those questions, the book explores virtually all of the major policy issues confronting women. Topics include employment and appearance discrimination, the gender gap in pay and leadership opportunities, work/family policies, childcare, divorce, same- sex marriage, sexual harassment, domestic violence, rape, trafficking, abortion, poverty, and politics. Discussion focuses on the capacities and limits of law as a strategy for social change. Why, despite four decades of enforcement of equal employment legislation, is women's workplace status so far from equal? Why, despite a quarter century's effort at reforming rape law, is America's rate of reported rape the second highest in the developed world? Part of the problem lies in the absence of political mobilization around such issues and the underrepresentation of women in public office. This path-breaking book explores how women can and should act on what they want.

Although academics have never lacked for critics, publications on the profession tend to be either popularized polemics, which are engaging but misleading, or scholarly analyses, which are intellectually responsible but of little interest to anyone but specialists. In Pursuit of Knowledge offers an alternative: a unique portrait of academic life that should appeal to both experts and a general audience. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, including higher education, history, law, sociology, economics, and literature, the book focuses on the ways in which the pursuit of status has undermined the pursuit of knowledge. Deborah Rhode argues that both individual scholars and institutions in higher education are caught in an arms race of reputation. The result has been to skew priorities in scholarship, erode commitments to teaching, compromise efforts of public intellectuals, and impede effectiveness in administration. The book offers several solutions to counter these pervasive problems in our research institutions. Rhode makes a case for increasing accountability and realigning reward systems. She argues that what is needed is a greater sense of responsibility among universities and their faculties to narrow the gap between academic ideals and practices. In Pursuit of Knowledge is meticulously researched and elegantly written. It is also exceptionally entertaining in its use of quotations culled from over a hundred academic novels, including works by Kingsley Amis, Saul Bellow, David Lodge, and C.P. Snow.(For example, from P.G. Wodehouse's The Girl in Blue, "The Agee womantold us for three quarters of an hourhow she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.") The result is a highly readable but also deeply reflective analysis of the academic profession.

"Equal Justice Under Law" is one of America's most proudly proclaimed and widely violated legal principles. But it comes nowhere close to describing the legal system in practice. Millions of Americans lack any access to justice, let alone equal access. Worse, the increasing centrality of law in American life and its growing complexity has made access to legal assistance critical for all citizens. Yet according to most estimates about four-fifths of the legal needs of the poor, and two- to three-fifths of the needs of middle-income individuals remain unmet. This book reveals the inequities of legal assistance in America, from the lack of access to educational services and health benefits to gross injustices in the criminal defense system. It proposes a specific agenda for change, offering tangible reforms for coordinating comprehensive systems for the delivery of legal services, maximizing individual's opportunities to represent themselves, and making effective legal services more affordable for all Americans who need them.

Why are women so dramatically underrepresented in formal leadership positions-and what can be done to improve the situation? This unique collection takes up these questions in the crucial practical concepts of law, politics, and business-the arenas in which women's leadership has the most public influence. Bridging the worlds of theory and practice, the essays in this collection bring new insights to long-standing questions about the difference gender difference makes, both in access to leadership and in its exercise. The contributors to this collection represent some of the nation's most distinguished women leaders and most respected scholars on women and leadership, and reflect a distinctive array of perspectives and backgrounds. Among others, they include former Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder; former NOW president Patricia Ireland; the Right Honorable Kim Campbell, former prime minister of Canada; and Judith Resnik, the Arthur Liman Professor of Law, Yale Law School. Written in accessible, lively prose, and informed by a wealth of scholarship and personal experience, this collection should appeal to a broad audience.

This collection cuts across conventional disciplinary boundaries to address the roles, responsibilities, and regulation of contemporary lawyers. Contributors address common concerns from diverse perspectives, including philosophy, psychology, economics, political science, and organisational behaviour. Topics include the nature of professions, the structure of practice, the constraints of an adversarial system, the attorney-client relationship, the practical value of moral theory, the role of race and gender, and the public service responsibilities of lawyers and law students.

By any measure, the law as a profession is in serious trouble. Americans' trust in lawyers is at a low, and many members of the profession wish they had chosen a different path. Law schools, with their endlessly rising tuitions, are churning out too many graduates for the jobs available. Yet despite the glut of lawyers, the United States ranks 67th (tied with Uganda) of 97 countries in access to justice and affordability of legal services. The upper echelons of the legal establishment remain heavily white and male. Most problematic of all, the professional organizations that could help remedy these concerns instead jealously protect their prerogatives, stifling necessary innovation and failing to hold practitioners accountable. Deborah Rhode's The Trouble with Lawyers is a comprehensive account of the challenges facing the American bar. She examines how the problems have affected (and originated within) law schools, firms, and governance institutions like bar associations; the impact on the justice system and access to lawyers for the poor; and the profession's underlying difficulties with diversity. She uncovers the structural problems, from the tyranny of law school rankings and billable hours to the lack of accountability and innovation built into legal governance-all of which do a disservice to lawyers, their clients, and the public. The Trouble with Lawyers is a clear call to fix a profession that has gone badly off the rails, and a source of innovative responses.

For most of recorded history, men have held nearly all of the most powerful leadership positions. Today, although women occupy an increasing percentage of leadership positions, in America they hold less than a fifth of positions in both the public and private sectors. The United States ranks 78th in the world for women's representation in political office. In politics, although women constitute a majority of the electorate, they account for only 18 percent of Congress, 10 percent of governors, and 12 percent of mayors of the nation's 100 largest cities. In academia, women account for a majority of college graduates, but only about a quarter of full professors and university presidents. In law, women are almost half of law school graduates, but only 17 percent of the equity partners of major firms, and 22 percent of Fortune 500 general counsels. In business, women constitute a third of MBA graduates, but only 5 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs. In Women and Leadership, the eminent legal scholar Deborah L. Rhode focuses on women's underrepresentation in leadership roles and asks why it persists and what we can do about it. Although organizations generally stand to gain from increasing gender equity in leadership, women's underrepresentation is persistent and pervasive. Rhode explores the reasons, including women's family roles, unconscious gender bias, and exclusion from professional development networks. She stresses that we cannot address the problem at the individual level; instead, she argues that we need broad-based strategies that address the deep-seated structural and cultural conditions facing women. She surveys a range of professions-politics, management, law, and academia-and draws from a survey of prominent women to develop solutions that can successfully chip away at the imbalance. These include developing robust women-to-women networks, enacting laws and policies that address work/life imbalances, and training programs that start at an earlier age. Rhode's clear exploration of the leadership gap and her compelling policy prescriptions will make this an essential book for anyone interested in leveling the playing field for women leaders in America.

An engaging account of ambition, the forces that drive and constrain it, and whether it serves our deepest needs. Ambition is a dominant force in for human civilization, driving its greatest achievements and most horrific abuses. Our striving has brought art, airplanes, and antibiotics, as well as wars, genocide, and despotism. This mixed record raises obvious concerns about how we can channel ambition in the most productive directions. In Ambition, Deborah L. Rhode offers a comprehensive and engaging survey of the topic that focuses in particular on the nature of ambition in contemporary American life. To do this, she first explores three central focuses of ambition-recognition, power, and money-and argues that an excessive preoccupation with these external markers for success can be self-defeating for individuals and toxic for society. She then shifts to discussing the obstacles to constructive ambition and the consequences when ambitions are skewed or blocked by inequality and identity-related characteristics such as gender, race, class, and national origin. Rhode further addresses the ways that families, schools, and colleges might play a more effective role in developing positive ambition. Finally, she examines what sorts of ambitions contribute to sustained well-being, such as building relationships and contributing to society, rather than chasing extrinsic rewards such as wealth, power, and fame. Drawing upon leading thinkers on the topic and contemporary social science research while laying out an agenda for how ambition can be better developed, Ambition will force us reconsider the factors that shape our ambitions, and whether those ambitions meet our deepest needs and highest aspirations.

No occupation in America supplies a greater proportion of leaders than law. They obviously lead law firms, but they also sit at the helm of a vast and diverse array of businesses across America, including 10 percent of S & P 500 firms. And of course, a strikingly large percentage of our political leaders are attorneys, including half the members of Congress. This raises two obvious questions: why do we look to lawyers to lead, and why do so many of them prove to be so untrustworthy and unprepared? In Lawyers as Leaders, eminent law professor Deborah Rhode not only answers these questions but crafts an essential manual for attorneys who need to develop better leadership skills. She contends that the legal profession attracts a large number of individuals with the ambition and analytic capabilities to be leaders, but often fails to develop other qualities that are essential to their effectiveness. The focus of legal education and the reward structure of legal practice undervalue the interpersonal skills and ethical commitments necessary for successful leadership. Although some lawyers are sufficiently gifted to need little reinforcement, Rhode shows that the vast majority of law school graduates need to develop the leadership characteristics that she profiles. They know it too. According to one survey, almost 90 percent of attorneys stated that their law schools did not teach them leadership skills.
Given the importance of the topic, it is surprising how little the profession has done to develop leadership skills. The first serious treatment of the subject, Lawyers as Leaders will be essential to law school instructors who teach leadership courses (a growing field) and any attorney who finds him or herself in a management position.

By any measure, the law as a profession is in serious trouble. Americans' trust in lawyers is at a low, and many members of the profession wish they had chosen a different path. Law schools, with their endlessly rising tuitions, are churning out too many graduates for the jobs available. Yet despite the glut of lawyers, the United States ranks 67th (tied with Uganda) of 97 countries in access to justice and affordability of legal services. The upper echelons of the legal establishment remain heavily white and male. Most problematic of all, the professional organizations that could help remedy these concerns instead jealously protect their prerogatives, stifling necessary innovation and failing to hold practitioners accountable. In light of these circumstances, it is unsurprising that law ranked the lowest of ten occupations in a 2013 Pew survey of which profession or occupation contributes the most to society's well being. Deborah Rhode's The Trouble with Lawyers is a comprehensive account of the challenges facing the American bar. She examines how the problems have affected (and originated within) law schools, firms, and governance institutions like bar associations; the impact on the justice system and access to lawyers for the poor; and the profession's underlying difficulties with diversity. She uncovers the structural problems, from the tyranny of law school rankings and billable hours to the legal profession's almost entirely reactive response to claims of misconduct-all of which do a disservice to lawyers, their clients, and the public. A clear and pointed account of a profession that has gone badly off the rails, The Trouble with Lawyers is both an essential guide to America's legal crisis and a tool that can help fix it.

In this penetrating new book, Deborah L. Rhode goes beyond the commonplace attacks on lawyers to provide the first systematic study of the structural problems confronting the legal profession. A past president of the Association of American Law Schools and senior counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Clinton's impeachment proceedings, Rhode brings an insider's knowledge to the labyrinthine complexities of how the law works, or fails to work, for most Americans and often for lawyers themselves.

Americans claim to care about character. Over four fifths want it taught in public schools, and 95 percent think that a president's character is important. And historically, philosophers, educators, politicians, religious leaders, judges, and the general public have agreed that character should be valued and reinforced. Yet in the United States, the institutions charged with that mission have consistently fallen short. Simply put, too little effort has been made to understand the importance of character and the strategies that can best develop and support it. After first exploring the history of the concept over time, Deborah Rhode turns her focus to the institutions that have traditionally fostered good character: families, schools, youth organizations, civic groups, and political organizations. However, as we have increasingly de-emphasized the subject-a trend that is most evident in our politics-our awareness of its shaping influence has waned. Indeed, we often focus on the wrong things when it comes to fostering good character. For instance, almost a third of the workforce is covered by licensing laws requiring good moral character, even occupations where the need for screening is not self-evident: florist, fortune teller, and frog farmers. Character also plays a pivotal role in the criminal justice system, in defining guilt, punishment, and eligibility for parole. All too often, these legal requirements are idiosyncratic, inequitable, and subject to race and class bias. Millions of Americans who have convictions for minor offenses are excluded from a vast range of occupations and benefits without evidence that such exclusion serves the public interest. We can do better, she stresses, and outlines a powerful program for reform. Rhode punctuates the book through a series of portraits of exemplary individuals whose good character made them who they were: Ida B. Wells, Jane Addams, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Albert Schweitzer, and Thurgood Marshall. All of these individuals had flaws, but through their commitments to both social justice and helping the less fortunate, they all demonstrate the power and importance of strong character.

No occupation in America supplies a greater proportion of leaders than law. They obviously lead law firms, but they also sit at the helm of a vast and diverse array of businesses across America, including 10 percent of S & P 500 firms. And of course, a strikingly large percentage of our political leaders are attorneys, including half the members of Congress. This raises two obvious questions: why do we look to lawyers to lead, and why do so many of them prove to be so untrustworthy and unprepared? In Lawyers as Leaders, eminent law professor Deborah Rhode not only answers these questions but crafts an essential manual for attorneys who need to develop better leadership skills. She contends that the legal profession attracts a large number of individuals with the ambition and analytic capabilities to be leaders, but often fails to develop other qualities that are essential to their effectiveness. The focus of legal education and the reward structure of legal practice undervalue the interpersonal skills and ethical commitments necessary for successful leadership. Although some lawyers are sufficiently gifted to need little reinforcement, Rhode shows that the vast majority of law school graduates need to develop the leadership characteristics that she profiles. They know it too. According to one survey, almost 90 percent of attorneys stated that their law schools did not teach them leadership skills. Given the importance of the topic, it is surprising how little the profession has done to develop leadership skills. The first serious treatment of the subject, Lawyers as Leaders will be essential to law school instructors who teach leadership courses (a growing field) and any attorney who finds him or herself in a management position.

At a time when legal and social prohibitions on sexual relationships are declining, Americans are still nearly unanimous in their condemnation of adultery. Over 90 percent disapprove of cheating on a spouse. In her comprehensive account of the legal and social consequences of infidelity, Deborah Rhode explores why. She exposes the harms that criminalizing adultery inflicts, and she makes a compelling case for repealing adultery laws and prohibitions on polygamy. In the twenty-two states where adultery is technically illegal although widely practiced, it can lead to civil lawsuits, job termination, and loss of child custody. It is routinely used to threaten and tarnish public officials and undermine military careers. And running through the history of anti-adultery legislation is a double standard that has repeatedly punished women more severely than men. An "unwritten law" allowing a man to avoid conviction for killing his wife's lover remained common well into the twentieth century. Murder under these circumstances was considered an act of understandable passion. Adultery has been called the most creative of sins, and novelists and popular media have lavished attention on sexual infidelity. As a focus of serious study, however, adultery has received short shrift. Rhode combines a comprehensive account of the legal and social consequences of adultery with a forceful argument for halting the state's policing of fidelity.

Cheating is deeply embedded in everyday life. The costs of the most common forms of cheating total close to a trillion dollars annually. Part of the problem is that many individuals fail to see such behavior as a serious problem. "Everyone does it" is a common rationalization, and one that comes uncomfortably close to the truth. That perception is also self-perpetuating. The more that individuals believe that cheating is widespread, the easier it becomes to justify. Yet what is most notable about analysis of the problem is how little there is of it. Whether or not Americans are cheating more, they appear to be worrying about it less. In Cheating, eminent legal scholar Deborah Rhode offers the only recent comprehensive account of cheating in everyday life and the strategies necessary to address it. Because cheating is highly situational, Rhode drills down on its most common forms in sports, organizations, taxes, academia, copyright infringement, marriage, and insurance and mortgages. Cheating also reviews strategies necessary to address the pervasiveness and persistence of cheating in these contexts. We clearly need more cultural reinforcement of ethical conduct. Efforts need to begin early, with values education by parents, teachers, and other role models who can display and reinforce moral behaviors. Organizations need to create ethical cultures, in which informal norms, formal policies, and reward structures all promote integrity. People also need more moral triggers that remind them of their own values. Equally important are more effective enforcement structures, including additional resources and stiffer sanctions. Finally, all of us need to take more responsibility for combatting cheating. We need not only to subject our own conduct to more demanding standards, but also to assume a greater obligation to prevent and report misconduct. Sustaining a culture that actively discourages cheating is a collective responsibility, and one in which we all have a substantial stake.

Universally considered to be pathbreaking, landmark, original, and provocative since its first edition was published three decades ago, "Women in Law" continues to provide a sociological and historical analysis of the overt and subtle ceilings placed on women in the legal profession in their various roles. It is a foundational work for departments of gender studies, law, and sociology - but also reads as accessible and interesting to a general audience.

Adding a new foreword by Stanford's Deborah Rhode, the thirtieth anniversary edition of this classic book reports countless revealing interviews, war stories, and inside glimpses of the many professional roles that women inhabit: lawyers, judges, professors, leaders, and backroom labor. It also brings vividly to life the candid - and sometimes cringeworthy - assessments by male lawyers and judges about the changes to the profession ushered in by the increasing entry of women to the lawyers' club.

Part of the "Classics of Law & Society" Series from Quid Pro, "Women in Law" is recognized as within the canon of its field, and now is available in a modern paperback format. It features embedded page numbers from the previous print editions (to facilitate referencing, classroom assignment, and continuity with the new ebook editions), as well as all the original tables and figures.

"From the new Foreword: "

"When Cynthia Fuchs Epstein published her pathbreaking account of "Women in Law," their status in the profession was separate and anything but equal.... Over the last three decades, much has changed but too much has remained the same. Now, about half of new lawyers in the United States are women and they are fairly evenly distributed across substantive areas. Yet significant gender disparities persist. Women constitute about a third of the lawyers in large firms, but only about 17 percent of equity partners. Attrition rates are almost twice as high among female associates as among comparable male associates.... When Epstein published "Women in Law," part of what attracted its widespread acclaim was its originality; it was among the first in what has now become a rich literature on gender and diversity in the profession. Indeed, the fact that the book is being reissued testifies not only to its enduring scholarly value, but also to the attention that the issue now commands.... Her book helped inspire that movement, and our profession remains deeply in her debt." - Deborah L. RhodeErnest W. McFarland Professor of Law, Stanford Law School

"Impressive ... a story which the legal world can read with no legal pride and which others will read with substantial interest." - "New York Times Book Review" (reviewing the first edition)

Teenage pregnancy is widely viewed as a significant social problem. This path-breaking book argues that much of the problem stems from simplistic or inaccurate perceptions of what the problem is. Is it pregnancy in the teen years? Adolescent childbirth? Childbirth to teenagers outside marriage? Adolescent sexual activity? Commentators in this volume believe that the problem is not so much teenagers who want sex too soon, but a society that offers too little too late-too little birth-control information, too few job opportunities, and too little reason for many low-income teenagers to stay in school and delay childbearing. Although most individuals believe that childbirth outside of marriage for women under eighteen is a cause of poverty, these essays suggest that poverty is also a partial cause of early childbirth. The authors of this collection are prominent American and British researchers from varied backgrounds including law, psychology, sociology, medicine, philosophy, and history. In spite of other differences, they generally agree that more teenagers are unlikely to "just say no" to early sex or childbirth unless they have more opportunities to say yes to something else. To alter the social conditions that simultaneously promote and punish early childbearing, the authors argue that we need a better range of health, welfare, educational, and vocational strategies. As these researchers conclude, we cannot alter adolescents' choices without also redirecting adult priorities.

No issue has been more central to the American women’s movement than sexual difference.  This book offers a unique study of the nature, origins, and consequences of sexual difference.  Leading scholars in history, philosophy, law, literary theory, biology, sociology, psychology, political science, and anthropology explore the difference difference makes.    Several traditions of feminist response to difference are reflected in this volume.  One approach has been to challenge the long-established tendency to mischaracterize culturally influenced gender differences as biological or psychological imperatives.  Among the essays that draw on this tradition are Karl Degler’s, John Dupré’s, Ruth Hubbard’s, and Herma Hill Kay’s reviews of sociobiology; Nancy Chodorrow’s challenges to conventional psychoanalytic frameworks; and Barrie Throne’s discussion of sex stereotypes and situational influences.  A second strand of feminist work has sought to challenge not the significance of gender differences but the importance society has attached to them.  Alison Jaggar, Nel Noddings, Susan Moller Okin, and Koaren Offen review the capacities and constraints of this approach.  A third strategy attempts to dislodge difference by challenging its centrality and its organizing premises, thus recasting the debate about gender relations.  Essays by Bell Hooks and Julianne Malveaux on race, Jane Collier and Sylvia Yanagisako an anthropology, Kay Deaux and Brenda Major on social psychology, Catharine MacKinnon and Deborah Rhode on law, and Estell Freedman, Marilyn Frye, and Regenia Gagnier on feminist theory explore the ideological and policy implications of this perspective.  With its wide range of distinguished scholarship, this important new volume deepens our perceptions of both the gendered nature of theory and theories about gender.   “An outstanding collection that promises to become a classic.� –Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, author of Deceptive Distinctions: Sex, Gender, and the Social Order

"It hurts to be beautiful" has been a cliche for centuries. What has been far less appreciated is how much it hurts not to be beautiful. The Beauty Bias explores our cultural preoccupation with attractiveness, the costs it imposes, and the responses it demands.
Beauty may be only skin deep, but the damages associated with its absence go much deeper. Unattractive individuals are less likely to be hired and promoted, and are assumed less likely to have desirable traits, such as goodness, kindness, and honesty. Three quarters of women consider appearance important to their self image and over a third rank it as the most important factor.
Although appearance can be a significant source of pleasure, its price can also be excessive, not only in time and money, but also in physical and psychological health. Our annual global investment in appearance totals close to $200 billion. Many individuals experience stigma, discrimination, and related difficulties, such as eating disorders, depression, and risky dieting and cosmetic procedures. Women bear a vastly disproportionate share of these costs, in part because they face standards more exacting than those for men, and pay greater penalties for falling short.
The Beauty Bias explores the social, biological, market, and media forces that have contributed to appearance-related problems, as well as feminism's difficulties in confronting them. The book also reviews why it matters. Appearance-related bias infringes fundamental rights, compromises merit principles, reinforces debilitating stereotypes, and compounds the disadvantages of race, class, and gender. Yet only one state and a half dozen localities explicitly prohibit such discrimination. The Beauty Bias provides the first systematic survey of how appearance laws work in practice, and a compelling argument for extending their reach. The book offers case histories of invidious discrimination and a plausible legal and political strategy for addressing them. Our prejudices run deep, but we can do far more to promote realistic and healthy images of attractiveness, and to reduce the price of their pursuit.

For most of recorded history, men have held nearly all of the most powerful leadership positions. Today, although women occupy an increasing percentage of leadership positions, in America they hold less than a fifth of positions in both the public and private sectors. The United States ranks 78th in the world for women's representation in political office. In politics, although women constitute a majority of the electorate, they account for only 18 percent of Congress, 10 percent of governors, and 12 percent of mayors of the nation's 100 largest cities. In academia, women account for a majority of college graduates, but only about a quarter of full professors and university presidents. In law, women are almost half of law school graduates, but only 17 percent of the equity partners of major firms, and 22 percent of Fortune 500 general counsels. In business, women constitute a third of MBA graduates, but only 5 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs. In Women and Leadership, the eminent legal scholar Deborah L. Rhode focuses on women's underrepresentation in leadership roles and asks why it persists and what we can do about it. Although organizations generally stand to gain from increasing gender equity in leadership, women's underrepresentation is persistent and pervasive. Rhode explores the reasons, including women's family roles, unconscious gender bias, and exclusion from professional development networks. She stresses that we cannot address the problem at the individual level; instead, she argues that we need broad-based strategies that address the deep-seated structural and cultural conditions facing women. She surveys a range of professions in politics, management, law, and academia and draws from a survey of prominent women to develop solutions that can successfully chip away at the imbalance. These include developing robust women-to-women networks, enacting laws and policies that address work/life imbalances, and training programs that start at an earlier age. Rhode's clear exploration of the leadership gap and her compelling policy prescriptions will make this an essential book for anyone interested in leveling the playing field for women leaders in America.

What Women Want is a trenchant examination of the struggle for women's equality, and a prescription for what to focus on next in order to ensure maximum success. Feminism today is a movement that lacks leadership, unity, and definition, and it has gotten stuck in a boom and bust cycle when it comes to public opinion and action. Despite significant progress over the last fifty years, equality is still a distant goal in the political, social, and economic spheres. Only by identifying the barriers (both internal and external) that remain, Deborah Rhode argues, can we begin to identify solutions. A rigorously researched and well-written answer to the glut of gender-related books that have come onto the market recently, What Women Want comprehensively analyzes the challenges the feminist movement faces today. Combining sharp academic analysis and interviews with notable figures such as Sheryl Sandberg, Rhode focuses on five main topics: employment issues such as pay discrimination, work-life balance and the government's pitiful response, the assault on women's reproductive rights and the limits it places on their economic mobility, sexual harassment and violence, and the detrimental effect that the unfashionable label "feminist" can have, especially in attracting young women to the movement. Despite these formidable obstacles, the goals and principles of feminism are widely accepted by the American mainstream, and Rhode, herself a pathbreaker in the fields of law and education, offers effective strategies for redefining and advancing the feminist agenda, thereby creating a movement that truly recognizes, and is responsive to, what all women want.