A comprehensive state-of-the-art review of gender in one of the world's most diverse and dynamic regions. The authors draw on a wide range of sources, including their own field research, to explore changes and continuities in gender roles, relations and identities during the late twentieth century into the twenty-first. Debunking traditional universalizing stereotypes, diversity in gender is highlighted in relation to the cross-cutting influences of age, class, sexuality, ethnicity, rural-urban residence, and migrant status.

Introduction : gender in a changing continent / Sylvia Chant
Gender, politics and legislation / Nikki Craske
Gender, poverty and social movements / Nikki Craske
Gender and population / Sylvia Chant
Gender and health / Sylvia Chant
Gender and sexuality / Sylvia Chant with Nikki Craske
Gender, families and households / Sylvia Chant
Gender and employment / Sylvia Chant
Gender and migration / Sylvia Chant
Conclusion : looking to the future / Sylvia Chant

Sylvia Chant is professor of geography at the London School of Economics. She has written many books, including Women-headed Households: Diversity and Dynamics in the Developing World and Mainstreaming Men in Gender and Development (with Matthew Gutmann).

Nikki Craske is director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Liverpool and senior lecturer in Latin American Politics. Her publications include Women and Politics in Latin America (Polity Press and Rutgers University Press) and Gender and the Politics of Rights (coedited with Maxine Molyneux).