When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, its primary target was the outright exclusion of women from particular jobs. Over time, the Act's scope of protection has expanded to prevent not only discrimination based on sex but also discrimination based on expression of gender identity. Kimberly Yuracko uses specific court decisions to identify the varied principles that underlie this expansion. Filling a significant gap in law literature, this timely book clarifies an issue of increasing concern to scholars interested in gender issues and the law.

Although formal barriers to women s social and political participation have crumbled, society remains, to a significant degree, gendered in the roles that women and men play. Women s and men s choices regarding work and family are largely responsible for maintaining and reinforcing the differences. While feminists recognize the need to criticize women s choices, too often they focus on restrictive conditions rather than the choices themselves. Kimberly A. Yuracko argues instead that encouraging women to make choices in accordance with a grounded and well-defined conception of perfectionism a philosopy concerned with human flourishing is the most effective way to redress persistent gender inequality. To this end, Yuracko seeks not only to expose the perfectionism underlying current choice critiques, but to articulate a concrete set of feminist perfectionist principles that would improve the quality of individual women s lives and improve the social standing of women as a whole."