LAUSR

dynamics between the working-class women and their organizations, but also the Bolivarian revolutionary state during the Chávez mandate. According to Elfenbein, sometimes these interactions are evident, while at other times the state and its agents keep them in inaccessible and undetermined areas, away from working-class women and their organizations. Many times, the strategy and interests of the revolutionary Chavista project demand it. As shown throughout the work, this Chavista state advocates the rights of this social sector, but at the same time does not protect them. In line with these observations, and from my position as a Latin American academic who, in Peru, heads the Socially Responsible Leadership, Women, and Equity Research Group at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, I enthusiastically and highly recommend reading, disseminating, and discussing Engendering Revolution. I have no doubt that it is an original contribution to gender studies in the region and to political work on the Bolivarian Revolution. I really appreciate its novel conception and development, derived from a US feminist perspective. It focuses on analyzing a complex, multiracial, and multiethnic Latin American society that always demanded greater social justice and greater gender justice during Chávez’s long presidential term, despite the inclusive and benefactor discourse of the revolutionary Bolivarian state. Furthermore, in this work, Elfenbein conducts a masterful extended case study with a methodology that she adapted in a creative manner to the social reality under study. Finally, this overwhelming book offers a new way of approaching the gender role and gender justice in Venezuela, a thorough research that seeks to find the essence of the dynamics of relations between the state and poor women and their organizations in that country. Moreover, this research also reveals how the government or the state can offer poor women and their organizations support and the promise of integration and, at the same time, redirect the action, time, and energy of this social sector, leaving social justice and gender justice subordinate to the primary objectives of the government or the state. Beatrice Avolio CENTRUM Católica Graduate Business School; Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú