Catherine V. Scott demonstrates that many prevailing ideas about development, dependency, capitalism, and socialism are anchored in social constructions of gender differences.

Early modernization theorists, points out Scott, often juxtaposed modernity and tradition in ways reminiscent of Enlightenment dichotomies that pitted the rational, productive city against the particularistic, fragmented, and stagnant countryside. Dependency theory, despite its radically difference focus on the causes of underdevelopment, also rests upon masculinist conceptions of the unfolding of history, human labor, and the gendered divisions between the public and private realms.

Recent theories of the African "soft state," realized in policymaking, revive modernization theory's dichotomies; and revolutionary political leaders in African countries, though they have challenged imperialism, have retained the Marxist blind-spot regarding gender. This provocative critique of both theory and practice goes beyond the "women in development" approach to explore fundamental reconceptualizations of tradition, modernity, masculinity, femininity, revolution, and development.