ABSTRACT
Gender inequality has declined in recent decades, while most forms of wage inequality have risen, and inequality among women is emerging as a key feature of women’s work experience. These are just a few of the realities that make configurations of inequality necessary: different dimensions of inequality have followed different spatial and temporal trajectories and, as I have shown throughout this book, are linked to different aspects of economic restructuring and the new economy. But configurations of inequality move beyond demonstrating differences between gender, race, and class to identifying relationships-between restructuring and inequality on the one hand and among different dimensions of inequality on the other. Configurations of inequality identify distinct patterns of gender, class, and racial inequality that are associated with specific paths of economic development in regions throughout the United States. Industrial Detroit and postindustrial Dallas, for example, have configurations of inequality that are polar opposites, with gender-related cleavages taking on greater importance in the former city and class and racial cleavages in the latter.
