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Economic and policy arrangements assure the maintenance of gender-based inequities throughout the life cycle. To understand the economics of aging requires consideration of the problems of women of all ages, commencing early in the adult life cycle when the different social roles and opportunity structures available to men and women take effect. Because the economic inequities suffered by women in old age derive principally from inequities suffered earlier as wives and workers, public policy focused on redressing income in old age does nothing to alter the structural basis of inequity. This article examines factors underlying the economics of aging for older women in the United States; delineates the relation between women's roles, social policy, and income; and raises salient policy questions for younger and older women.

Despite the controversial nature of studies of reproductive phenomena, a major center of reproductive biology emerged and coalesced in the Department of Zoology at the University of Chicago circa 1892–1940. Led by Frank R. Lillie, several small groups of researchers pioneered the study of sex determination and sex hormones, pursuing these via a Chicago approach to framing biological practice at both cellular and organismic levels. They worked in an interdisciplinary manner, however much in tandem, and drew strongly on local resources—from the stockyards to local philanthropy. Most remarkably, Lillie redirected the mission of the major National Research Council (NRC) Committee for Research Problems of Sex to address the biology of sex and then garnered about a fifth of its funds for Chicago. He thus guided Chicago biology into the fully modern era of external support for on-campus research and elaborate national scientific networks via promising biological solutions to social problems.

Under what conditions does an entire line of scientific work become controversial, and with what consequences? Nuclear physics, environmental studies, and sociobiology are familiar examples of controversial sciences. The case examined here is the development of American reproductive sciences over the past century, shaped by four domains of controversy: (1) association with sexuality and reproduction; (2) association with clinical quackery and hotly debated treatments; (3) association with controversial social movements; and (4) the capacity of reproductive sciences to create “Brave New Worlds.” Scientists' strategies for managing controversy are delineated.The framework used is arena analysis, and the paper concludes with rudiments of a conditional theory of status as a controversial “boundary world.”