This book provides an accessible engaging account of childcare policies in Britain and beyond. In examining the progress of women's initiatives and childcare, Marchbank considers subjects including: the history of childcare policy, particularly during the Second World War childcare policy and women's economic activity across the EC detailed case studies of policy making in practice the covert and overt barriers to equality-based policy making successful strategies and counter-strategies for policy makers and campaigners.

Labour focuses on the issues and problems concerning the efficient full employment of labour in a free market economy. The discussion is largely about the conditions (including comparative wages) underlying industrial efficiency and maximum production from various labour resources at least cost. By estimating man-power, analysing the human factor and measuring labour efficiency, the book summarizes recent evidence on employment conditions for or against efficiency and the effect upon the incidence of unemployment.

Drawing on interviews with over half of new Labour women MPs, Sarah Childs reveals how the women experienced being MPs, and explores whether they acted for and like women - in constituencies, in Parliament and in government.

The Second World War is often seen as a period of emancipation, because of the influx of women into paid work, and because the state took steps to relieve women of domestic work. This study challenges such a picture. The state approached the removal of women from the domestic sphere with extreme caution, in spite of the desperate need for women’s labour in war work. Women’s own preferences were frequently neglected or distorted in the search for a compromise between production and patriarchy. However, the enduring practices of paying women less and treating them as an inferior category of workers led to growth in the numbers and proportions of women employed after the war in many areas of work. Penny Summerfield concludes that the war accelerated the segregation of women in 'inferior' sectors of work, and inflated the expectation that working women would bear the double burden without a redistribution of responsibility for the domestic sphere between men, women and the state. First published in 1984, this is an important book for students of history, sociology and women’s studies at all levels.

In their analyses of the role of women in politics, political scientists had tended to neglect the family and the labour market, thus ignoring a crucial aspect of women’s political activity. Originally published in 1981, this book shows that the family and the labour market are political institutions directly relevant to the distribution of power and to economic and social development. Because the political functions of these two institutions are ignored, political systems are misunderstood with serious consequences for the implementation of policy. The studies in the book, which relate to widely different political systems and which cross disciplinary boundaries, all concentrate on the crucial activities of women. They serve to increase our understanding of the political implications of the family, of the sexual divisions of both domestic and wage labour and of the role of education in these inequalities at the time. They show the fundamental comparability of the problems posed by patriarchy as well as the diversity of their manifestations in different political and economic systems. Further, the studies show an unexpected dependence of male-dominated institutions, such as the military and high technology, on women’s traditional gender roles. Ways of empowering the powerless through law, political activity and employment are also discussed. By extending the scope of discussion, this book is a valuable contribution to our understanding of politics and of the centrality of women to political structures.

Ten contributions from scholars and activists discuss the political economy of the labor process in the age of global capitalism, examining how the global economy effects ordinary people in the workplace. Topics include, for example, the struggle for control at the point of production, the division of labor along racial lines in U.S. agriculture, and women and resistance in the transnational labor force. Editor Berberoglu teaches sociology at the U. of Nevada, Reno. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Women, Power and Resistance is an accessible introductory book on Women's Studies. It is divided into interdisciplinary sections covering key aspects and major debates, centering on four main areas: The Social Organization of Gender Relations The Cultural Representation of Women Gender and Social Identity

First published in 1982, this collection was the result of an ambitious and wide-ranging, inter-disciplinary research programme conducted by the International Labour Office (ILO) on the relationship between women’s roles and demographic change, with a view to influencing contemporary government and non-government policy and future research in the field. The ILO held an informal gathering of leading researchers in the fields of economics, anthropology, sociology and demography and this volume represents a unique and practically-orientated collection, offering valuable insights into contemporary perspectives on women’s studies and population dynamics.