Using the history of the Irish linen industry as a substantive case study Spinning the Threads of Uneven Development shows how gendered variations in the division of labor within and between households affected the economic development of the local and regional textile industry beginning with industrialization through to the transition to industrial capitalism. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from census records to folk poetry, Jane Gray develops a dynamic model of gender that links the allocation of labor within households to macro-socioeconomic change. Expanding on recent literature of the salience of gender in the Irish political economy, Spinning the Threads of Uneven Development is important reading for social and economic historians as well as those interested in the role of gender in economic development and Irish history.

"Its success rests upon Gray's convincing and innovative use of gender as an analytic tool. By using gender to disrupt and refine the powerful but simplistic models of both proto-industrial and world systems theory, and by exploring gender relations both in statistical and cultural sources, Gray offers a model for a kind of history that deserves more attention." - H- Albion

"Gray's analysis is ambitious, and her incorporation of various theories related to gender, industrialisation and capitalist development extensive." - Irish Economy and Social History, October 2008