This is perhaps the first comprehensive book on the subject of gender in Africa from a microeconomic perspective. Targeted toward upper-level undergraduates and graduate students, it provides an overview of many of the key debates among economists regarding gender and development. Although the book covers Africa as a whole, it also draws on insights based on extensive fieldwork Michael Kevane conducted in Burkina Faso and Sudan.

Kevane explores gender issues by using the economic method based on model building and verification. His approach, like that of most economists, is based on assumptions of methodological individualism, inference, and syllogistic reasoning that examines causes and effects. In short, he is interested in predicting and explaining the essence of behavior, of how and why people make choices. For scholars like Kehane who are trained in neoclassical microeconomic theory, people make choices to maximize their utility, that is, their satisfaction or happiness. He argues that they make these choices within structural constraints that place parameters on their budget, labor, time, and other such factors. Statistical applications of the data are employed to test the models.

The book draws on a mix of neoclassical and feminist economics as well as economic anthropology and cultural approaches to explain the gendered dimensions of land use, control of labor, marriage markets, household bargaining, treatment of boys and girls, investments in education, and other such issues. The author addresses key debates regarding these topics in a readable and lively way, mixing descriptions of models with empirical evidence. For Kevane, most theories of female subordination do not stand up to the test of internal consistency, nor are they verifiable (p. 34). They are not based on specific assumptions, nor do they draw logical inferences. Discrimination is rejected as an explanation in favor of explanations that focus on the importance of gender at an individual level.

In one of the strongest chapters on bargaining within the household, Kevane embraces the feminist economics critique of Gary Becker's unitary household model (that assumes that household members act in concert out of love and altruism). He adopts a bargaining model in which women's bargaining power matters and in which their control of income, land, and other assets makes a difference. Thus, studies have shown that the more bargaining power women have within the household over land, labor, and income, the more their preferences will differ from those of men and the more divergent their responses to price incentives and policy interventions. When women earn higher incomes, the result is a large and significant reduction of child malnutrition.

While Kevane's microeconomic focus on individual choice provides many useful insights, it also leaves many important issues and angles untouched regarding women and development. The focus on parents' investments in the education of their children does not take into consideration the important role of Universal Primary Education in encouraging female enrollment in Africa. The discussion of causes of underdevelopment in Africa does not consider external factors that are commonly thought to have contributed to Africa's woes, including the role of debt servicing, trade barriers, and foreign donors, not to mention World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies, for example, structural adjustment programs. The discussion of microcredit lending to women leaves out questions of female agency and collective strategies of women themselves for improving their circumstances. Similarly, an historical perspective on the evolution of marriage, labor, and land markets is largely absent, which means that various beliefs and practices that have evolved over time remain depicted as frozen in time.

Although many key debates are effectively engaged, a surprising number of relevant topics are sidestepped. Although it is impossible to cover every topic and theory of development in such a book, one would have expected more discussion of the seminal work of economist Amartya Sen and philosopher Martha Nussbaum, who adopt a capabilities approach that takes as its starting point not just questions of utility maximization but what physical and mental capabilities and social opportunities and influences people have available to them and how these rest on the efficiency and equity of social policies. Both Sen and Nussbaum have applied gender analysis to their capabilities approach.

While mention is made of women's care work in the home in the context of a discussion of the control of labor, this work tends to be underplayed in the book, especially when one considers how important it is to the daily lives of women and to the welfare of the household. Women care for the children, the sick, and the elderly; they cook, clean, and carry out voluntary community labor. Women engage in a wide variety of unpaid and unrecognized but crucial labor that occupies a large amount of their time and energy. Most studies of time allocation have shown that women work considerably more hours than men, a finding which Kevane dismisses. Studies in Kenya, for example, have shown that women work 56 hours a week compared with 42 hours for men, and they spend 10 times more hours than men in wood and water collection. Thus, the book discusses only GDP measures of national income, with no mention of the other ways in which women's work and welfare could be accounted for. These concerns have generated enormous debate in the field of gender and development, yet they are not addressed here.

In spite of these omissions, Women and Development in Africa is a unique and rare book. It is a welcome addition to the literature on women and development. The literature in this area abounds with popular but nevertheless untested assumptions about women in Africa. Kevane challenges economists and scholars of development to ask better questions, develop well-informed hypotheses, adopt more rigorous methods, and test their assumptions through solid empirical research.