Conference examined class and gender links A recent conference on the theme of "Reconfigurations of Class and Gender" held at University House on August 1-3 debated the most useful way of conceptualising the links between social class and gender inequality, and more generally the continuing significance of social class analysis as a framework for investigating inequality. The conference brought together members of the Comparative Project on Class Structure and Class Consciousness, a comparative study of class inequality in advanced societies that has been running for about 20 years, with some of the most eminent researchers in social class, gender inequality and the sociology of work and labour markets, from North America, Europe, UK and Australia. The conference was sponsored by the Reshaping Australian Institutions Project and the Research School of Social Sciences and was organised by Janeen Baxter and Mark Western of the RSSS Sociology Program. Keynote speakers included Professor Erik Olin Wright (University of Wisconsin-Madison), arguably the most influential Marxist class researcher in the world today, Professor Paula England (University of Arizona), Professor Rachel Rosenfeld (University of North Carolina), Professor Rosemary Crompton (University of Leicester) and Professor Wallace Clement (Carleton University), internationally renowned researchers in the area of social class, gender and work, and Associate Professor Jan Pakulski (University of Tasmania) who with Malcolm Waters (also at the University of Tasmania), has been largely responsible for reinvigorating the "death of class" debate, concerned with whether class matters anymore for social inequality and political action. Discussion during the conference was vigorous with most papers addressing the implications for class and gender analyses of post-industrial trends, such as the shift by core economies from goods to services, the entrance of married women into the labour force, the feminisation of poverty, the post-Fordist reorganisation of work, the increased volatility of worklife careers, high and persisting levels of unemployment and an apparent individualisation of lifestyles and sociopolitical behaviour. An edited book based on the keynote papers is planned, but in the meantime the conference papers are available on the Web. Janeen Baxter Sociology, RSSS