Gwendolyn Mink
Dividing Citizens will make a fine addition to the growing literature on women and the welfare state. The policy case studies are expert and lucid, giving a very deep anchor to feminist claims that the New Deal was gender biased. Mettler's powerful narrative control makes it possible for the non-specialist to follow the maze of policy-making and policy implementation.
Sidney M. Milkis
Dividing Citizens provides a fresh and provocative view of the New Deal—one that adds philosophical and historical depth to our understanding of the 'gender gap' in contemporary politics. Suzanne Mettler's close examination of the major policies enacted during the 1930s reveals how the New Deal extended the rights of individuals to the social and economic dimensions of citizenship, but fell short of upholding the rights of women to participate fully in this economic constitutional order. Skillfully combining intellectual, institutional, and policy history, Dividing Citizens encourages us to revisit the fundamental issue of how the New Deal welfare state affected the character and experience of American citizenship.
Richard M. Valelly
Suzanne Mettler has written a magnificent book. Each of the six detailed cases authoritatively presents fresh information based on a comprehensive command of a very large range of primary sources. Mettler gives a vivid sense of who the New Deal policymakers were and what their strategic goals and concerns were. While the book offers a structural analysis, real people are clearly depicted coping with or defending the institutional structure of federalism as they struggle over the design of national policy.
American Historical Review
In this important book, Mettler asserts that the New Deal creation of divided citizenship disadvantaged women by treating them with both equality and difference.... By pursuing both courses, the New Deal state enshrined and intensified women's inequality. One approach or the other.... would have rendered better results.... Mettler's book is a persuasive, well-conceived, and thoughtful analysis of how the promises of broadened social citizenship rights... reinforced inequality and discrimination in the realm of the state.
James MacGregor Burns
A highly original and sophisticated analysis that penetrates to the heart of the policymaking process, with significant implications for the serious and often hidden impact of 'states' rights' on women's rights. A landmark study, brilliantly intertwining institutional arrangements and moral concerns.
