Introduction - Jantine Oldersma and Kathy Davis
RT ONE
THREE DIMENSIONS OF POWER
Power and Love - Joan Meyer
Conflicting Conceptual Schemata
Gender, Power and Feminist Theory - Aafke Komter
PART TWO: POWER, STRUCTURE AND AGENCY
Critical Sociology and Gender Relations - Kathy Davis
Gendered Structure - Joan Wolffensperger
Giddens and the Conceptualization of Gender
PART THREE: SITES OF GENDERED POWER
Gender, Property and Power - Annelies Moors
Sovereign and Disciplinary Power - Riet Delsing
Bourdieu, Power and Resistance - Carla Risseeuw

Drawing on feminist theories of women's oppression and on social theories of power, this book offers original analyses of the relationship between gender and power.

The Gender of Power presents a critique of feminist theories of power as simply top-down models of the oppression of women. The authors argue that this notion presents women as passive victims and ignores the diversity and complexity of women's experiences. The ideas on power of Bourdieu, Giddens, Lukes and Foucault are also evaluated in terms of their usefulness in explaining relations between men and women, which can often be covert, consensual and intimate.