Capitalism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

In this chapter, the authors highlight the importance of capitalism to women's and gender historians, to articulate some key questions raised about the nature of economies and capitalism. They chose a few subfields to indicate the breadth and significance of work being done on women, gender, sexuality, and capitalism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The themes the authors highlight here are areas they find particularly exciting and generative for scholars of women and gender. In particular, the authors focus on reproductive labor ; consumer economy (provisioning, use, and production); coverture, the family, and economic policy; informal economies; and struggles for economic justice. Gender and women's historians have made it clear that marriage was a foundational economic institution in the United States.