Alice Evans’s The Great Gender Divergence

We’re delighted to share that Princeton University Press has acquired world rights, including audio, to Alice Evans’s The Great Gender Divergence, a global history of gender.

Inspired by research on The Great Divergence, Evans asks why, as societies around the world have become more gender-equal, some regions have become more equal than others. Something radical happened over the twentieth century: women entered the workforce and became political leaders across the world. This had never happened before, not in the entirety of human history. What changed? And why is progress so uneven?

The Great Gender Divergence will explain the causes of Europe’s “precocious equality,” how East Asia and Latin America caught up, why gender equity in the Middle East, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa has lagged behind, and why South-East Asia was always ahead. Evans offers a comparative history of how societies come to support gender equality and why this varies around the world, telling a story about geography, economic growth, strong states, and militant activism.

About the Author 

Alice Evans is a Lecturer in International Development at King’s College London and a Faculty Associate at the Center for International Development in Harvard’s Kennedy School. She has published many articles in top-tier journals, including World DevelopmentSocio-Economic Review, Review of International Political Economy, the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Health Economics, and Gender & Society. She also interviews academic experts on growth, governance, and gender in her podcast, Rocking Our Priors. Engage with her on Twitter @_alice_evans.