Book Talk with former Member Céline Bessière
organized by Francesca Trivellato,
Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the School of Historical Studies
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
5:30 p.m., Rubenstein Commons Café

Why do women of all socio-economic backgrounds accumulate less wealth than men? Why do marital separations impoverish women while they do not prevent men from remaining or becoming wealthy? In her new book co-authored with Sibille Gollac, The Gender of Capital: How Families Perpetuate Wealth Inequalities (Harvard University Press, 2023), Céline Bessière answers these questions, drawing from ethnographic observations and statistical analysis. The book breaks with the dominant tendency among sociologists to consider the modern family as an affective rather than economic unit. It also extends the work of economists such as Thomas Piketty, who have documented the growth of income and wealth inequality in the twenty-first century. 

The Gender of Capital shows that formal legal equality has not eliminated economic inequality between men and women. It illustrates the mechanisms through which women of all social classes lose financially when they divorce or inherit. Examples as diverse as those of the single mothers who joined the French “Yellow Vest” movement, the high-profile divorce of Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos, and the division of the estate of the Trump family demonstrate that capital is gendered. Bessière will discuss how class divisions and the patriarchal appropriation of capital reinforce one another.

A professor of sociology at Paris–Dauphine University, visiting professor at NYU, senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France, and former IAS Member in the School of Social Science (2016–17), Céline Bessière studies the material, economic, and legal dimensions of the family. In France, The Gender of Capital was also adapted into a graphic novel; it is currently being translated into Chinese and Korean.

Labyrinth Books will be on-site selling copies of The Gender of Capital: How Families Perpetuate Wealth Inequality.  A book signing will follow the talk.

Register below to attend.