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The sociologist Miriam M. Johnson's new book, Strong Mothers, Weak Wives, makes two important contributions to the ongoing feminist “search for gender equality” (her subtitle). The first is a thorough and lucidly presented review of recent social science research related to the origins, development, and forms of gender inequality. She ranges over territories psychological, sociological and anthropological, cueing the maps she makes to a basic feminist debate between “maximalists” and “minimalists” over differences between women and men and integrating analyses of personality with analyses of social structure. The review is conducted in a firm but never rigid tone, argumentative but never contentious, and Johnson has a rare capacity both to note the political meanings of positions with which she disagrees and also to accept parts of positions, rather than rejecting tout court—she is discriminating and judicious.
Her second contribution is her own theory about the key cross-cultural and transhistorical locus of gender inequality, or male dominance. That locus is, to put the matter very simply, the heterosexual marriage. Gender inequality for women means being the “weak wives” of Johnson's title. The phrase “strong mothers” points to the theory Johnson argues against: one that attributes women's secondary status to their