Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce, and the Family Under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies. By Mala Htun. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 232p. $60.00 cloth, $22.00 paper.

Under military rule from the 1960s to the 1980s and increasingly since the transitions to democracy in the 1980s and 1990s, second-wave feminists have mobilized for gender equality and to effect legal reforms in Latin America. Despite this activism and despite the steady stream of high-quality publications on gender and politics in Latin America, there has been very little comparative research on gender-related public policy reform in Latin America. Mala Htun's book on gender and public policymaking under democracy and dictatorship is an important scholarly contribution, filling many of the gaps in the literature on public policy and feminist activism in Latin America.