This book of 11 chapters presents a set of researches advances of the network ‘Gender, demography and development’ of the project Historical Patterns of Development and Underdevelopment: Origins and Persistence of the Great Divergence’ (HI-POD).

In the introduction editors Magdalena Camou, Silvana Maubrigades and Rosemary Thorp display a comprehensive review of the literature on gender and development. They notice that although many of the studies exploring this relationship have found that gender inequality indicators tend to decrease when the GDP per capita rises, we have to be careful however not to assume this relationship as linear, because certain patriarchal institutional structures could be quite efficient in generating economic growth while maintaining and even increasing the disadvantage conditions for specific social groups, including women. Hence, growth per se does not ensure more equality. In their thoughtful introduction the authors uphold the concept of ‘development’ rather than ‘economic growth’ (p.2). They Define development as ‘economic growth with people capacity expansion’ in the line of the normative theory of Amartya Sen.

The following chapter introduces new evidence about the historical patterns of gender inequality in the region. Maria Camou explores the relationship between gender inequality in education, health and women's participation in labour market’ (p.26; 39). Data used represents about seven Latin-American countries. Findings ‘confirm a positive relationship between education, female participation rate and economic performance’, but, as pointed out above, neither is this relation linear. Besides, since the indicators are not processed for all countries in the same periods, it is not easy to finish the review of the chapter with a global idea of those historical patterns. Undoubtedly, the availability of data and ‘appropriate sources’ (p.39) is not a minor problem that researchers have had to deal with.

The third chapter Silvana Maubrigades explores the long term connections between women's age marriage patterns and development. Additionally, the author tries to assess the utility of the European marriage pattern to analyse ‘women's empowerment [process] in Latin America’ (p.45). Maubrigades examines evidence from 8 countries following female age at first marriage as main indicator and analyses the relation with other variables such as: urbanization percentage; years of schooling; fertility rate; and GDP. Differently from the pattern observed in Europe, the author finds that, ‘age at first marriage has remained fairly stable: women [still] marry young’ in those countries included in the study. Fertility reduction would be associated with improvements in education. Insightfully the author suggests a relation between the pattern of marriage and the composition of the population by ethnic groups, the pattern shows differences among those countries with a major proportion of indigenous and/or rural populations and those which received massive European immigration (p.59-60).

The following chapters (4-10) are case studies. The fourth presented by Silvia Berger examines “the gender order in Argentina during the ‘oligarchic’ period (1880-1930)”. This study explores the relation among the production mode, the world capitalist economy and the variations in the global food market, as well as the ideological settings and gender order, all of them comprising an ‘oligarchic accumulation model’. As an example of the foresight mentioned above, here we can observe, simultaneously, economic growth (for period 1880–1914) and ‘a sharp fall in women's participation in the labour market’ (p.76). This analysis also raises the need to pay attention to the differences among territories inside the country, and of course inside the region.

Next chapter is ‘Women's Wages and the Gender Gap during the Period of Import Substituting Industrialization in Chile’ by Nora Reyes. She analyses changes that took place from 1940 until the 1980s in this country. Data collected show that though ‘the remuneration gap narrowed steadily during industrialization period’ women received systematically lower wages than men. In front of these findings the author explores possible causes and counterarguments, but to obtain definitive conclusions more data and more historical analyses are needed. Chapter 6, by Lorena Godoy, also refers to Chile in a similar period to the former (1930-1980). Godoy identifies “differences and inequalities between the trajectories of both [men and women] in labour market” as well as “the process of diversification of female labour market insertion, fluctuations in participation and ‘the process of segregation they faced’” (p.139). These changes were complemented by two patterns of beliefs about women's work: one representing the image of a low class worker woman as a poor woman ‘lacking a male protector’, the work of these women was considered ‘a problem’ and even ‘a threat’ for their ‘physical and moral integrity’; the other image was set for middle class professional women, for them participating in the labour market was not seen as a problem but as an ‘opportunity for development’. In both cases there persisted the idea of the women's paid work as an ‘activity that alters the familiar order’ (p.140) and therefore the gender order and gender relations in Chile.

Chapter seven, written by Loly Gaitan and Daniel Gomez, introduces an analysis of the evolution of education structure, in Colombia during first half of the twentieth century, the authors try to ‘understand how the development of education policy and contents of educative programs go together with the inclusion of women among the economic sectors’ (p.143). They found a progressive path of women's attendance at centres of education, first primary education, then secondary and technic education, especially after 1950, and superior. Regard the contents taught in schools they suggest that the development of the education sector in Colombia underpinned particularly the commerce sector. The next chapter, written by Maria Lopez and Diana Quintero, is also devoted to Colombia: this analyses the relation between the education system and labour market in that country during the whole twentieth century. However, the data used to observe the attendance in different levels of education, to calculate average years of education, and the relation between education level and income, corresponds only to Bogota. Likewise, the periods to which this data pertains are different and smaller than 1900–2000 (p.176-186). It seems as if both chapters analysing the Colombian case are still quite descriptive and there is a scope to advance toward an explanation more theoretically and empirically based.

Aurora Gomez and Lucia Madrigal analyse women's participation in the labour force in Mexico, during the twentieth century. They focus on childbearing and career decisions as related variables. The ‘analysis of data census by cohorts’ allows the authors to observe ‘different attitudes towards jobs and fertility’ among generations. Those changes may find an explanation in the structural arrangements made around industrialization processes, but also in the prevailing social values regarding ‘women working outside their homes’ at each period analysed (p.216). Maybe findings about the correlation between ‘increase of women participation in labour force’ with a ‘decrease of the number of children per women’ and with an ‘increase in the average years of female schooling’ are not new; however, the authors fared to identify that ‘[it] was the generation of women born in the 1940s that experienced a general change in the role of women in Mexico's society’. They ‘were more educated than their mothers and grandmothers and were given access to birth control methods’ (p.217). These changes are also related to the social and economic policy performed by the governments.

The last case study is presented by Alma Espino and Alina Machado: this chapter addresses the evolution of labour supply and gender differences in Uruguay from 1991 to 2009. The authors set a conceptual framework in which neoclassical theory regarding labour supply and individual decisions is revised; the authors argue that the explanation should be upgraded ‘accounting for gender differences’ as seen in some female labour supply studies – since individuals, and especially women, allocate their time not only calculating the value of the last ‘marginal unit of leisure time and market wage’, but because they are involved (in a more or less compulsory way) with ‘various types of non-market activities due to the sexual division of labour’ (quoted to Blundell and MaCurdy, Reference Blundell and MaCurdy1999). Among the factors that influence the probability of women to participate in the labour market, findings show that ‘household income earners’ and ‘being the head of the household’ have a ‘higher incidence’. Nevertheless, this ‘probability is higher for younger generations. . . Being married decreases the probability of the participation and increases that of men’ (p.241). And what about the conditions constraining women participation? According to this study the presence of children at household is central, the age of children has a ‘negative and decreasing effect’ while its effect is not significant in men's participation. Thus the ‘uncompensated elasticity of labour supply to own-income’ seems to be ‘higher when controlled by the presence of children by age for women’ (p.246).

In the final chapter, Gaston Diaz, discusses the database for historical studies regarding gender inequality in Latin America. Among the hurdles faced by researchers are the dearth and the suitability of data sources, as well as the ‘lack of internationally comparable time series’ since sources in each country and even at each period of time may use different categories and methodologies. Besides the author mentions a kind of ‘invisibility of women’ in the statistical sources for some periods of the twentieth century. A multi-country and comparable database for development indicators is a starting point for comparative studies if we want to approach broader questions about economic of growth, the role of institutions and the impact of globalization processes in the region. This seems to be one of the goals of the HI-POD Project, which until now has assembled information about six countries for five sets of indicators: population; education; health; political representation; labour market. The last of these is one of the most active areas of the research project and the case studies presented above have been linked to this dynamic.

After reading this book there is the certainty of being in front of a quite promising research agenda. While the title might create the expectation that the content will clearly show you the pattern and trajectory of gender inequalities in Latin American societies during the twentieth century, for now what this set of studies shows us are rather some key pieces of a puzzle that is waiting to be assembled. Perhaps there is still a need to make an analytical division to observe, in more depth, the diversity of Latin American societies. As few of these studies show, some particular features could be explanatory factors not only of the way in which gender inequalities are structured but also of the way in which these societies have been linked to the process called development. Finally, I wonder if in this way of constructing the analysis, putting a concept like ‘development’ as a conceptual framework to describe the context and to organize the analytical categories from which gender inequalities are identified, authors are not reproducing, even with precautions, a linear idea of the history of the Latin-American peoples and of their destiny.