This impressive and original study is one of the first books to combine mainstream sociology with feminism in exploring the subject of the professions and power. This is an important addition to the corpus of feminist scholarship... It provides fresh insights into the way in which male power has been used to limit the employment aspirations of women in the middle classes. - Rosemary Crompton, University of Kent

This book explores contemporary issues around pregnancy and childbirth using a feminist sociological approach. It goes beyond biological accounts of pregnancy and childbirth to examine the social processes.

This text discusses the role of the caring professions and reforms in the welfare state, assessing the impact on organizational roles and relationships. It should be of value to those studying sociology, social policy, nursing and social work.

First published in 2001, this book retraces the chronological history of the Italian Diaspora community in Britain from its inception in the eighteenth century to the present. The author describes the immigrants’ way of life, patterns of occupation, gender relations and modes of integration in the host country. In addition, the book focuses on the role of religion, an institution which has traditionally reinforced both Italian cultural identity and unequal gender relations. Until now, most ethnic studies have been carried out on racialized minorities - those with physical differences - and they have generally failed to emphasize the gender relations within minority communities.

The concept of 'patriarchy' is one which signals a sharp divide between traditions of feminist thought. Sylvia Walby attempts to conceptualize 'patriarchy' in a way that takes account not only of the complexity of relationships of gender, but also of the subtleties of the interconnections of patriarchy and capitalism. She rejects those accounts which treat patriarchy as a unified set of relations, or which confine the site of patriarchy to any one privileged sphere such as the family. Instead, she elaborates a novel view of patriarchy as a set of 'relatively autonomous relations', the connections between which are spelled out through a variety of detailed case studies. In contrast to many other views of 'capitalist patriarchy', Sylvia Walby characterizes the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy as a relationship, not of harmony and mutual accommodation, but of tension and conflict. This thesis is substantiated through a comparative historical analysis of three contrasting areas of employment: cotton textiles, engineering and clerical work. These analyses show the shortcomings of much conventional literature in sociology, history and economics on women's employment, which pays insufficient attention to the independence of patriarchal relations. The book draws upon sociological, historical, economic and geographic materials to argue for an understanding of gender relations in terms of the specific tensions and compromises between patriarchal and capitalist relations. Exploring the impact of the state on patterns of employment and unemployment completes a book rich in theoretical and empirical analysis. Patriarchy at Work will be recognized as a major contribution to feminist thought and the social sciences.

Fourteen provocative papers on the oppression of women in capitalist countries, along with three articles on the subordinate position of women in two communist countries, Cuba and China. These important, often path-breaking articles are arranged in five basic sections, the titles of which indicate the broad range of issues being considered: Introduction; motherhood, reproduction, and male supremacy; socialist feminist historical analysis; patriarchy in revolutionary society; socialist feminism in the United States. The underlying thrust of the book is toward integrating the central ideas of radical feminist thought with those pivotal for Marxist or socialist class analysis.

Professions are increasingly linked with enterprise at a number of interrelated levels. By considering the relationship of professions to the enterprise contexts in which they work, this book reveals the dilemmas posed to professional groups, and the opportunities and constraints that can arise in their organisational frameworks. Addressing both private and public sectors, this collection explores questions including: what are the implications for the culture, practices and identities of professions of working in enterprise contexts, including with increased globalisation? Are professions becoming more entrepreneurial in a knowledge economy? What are the tensions between professionalism and enterprise and how are these resolved? These are themes that are extremely important to professionals and their managers, especially with the rise of large-scale professional service firms serving corporate clients with truly global reach. This cutting-edge collection will be of interest to researchers, educators and advanced students studying professional behaviour in fields such as business studies, management, organisational analysis, public administration, political science, social policy and sociology, as well as students on focused programmes of professional study in fields such as health, law and social care.

The increasing proportion of women in the medical profession has been followed keenly both by conservative and feminist observers during the past three decades. Statistics both in Europe and in the United States tend to confirm that women work mainly in niches of the health care system or medical specialties characterized by relatively low earnings or prestige. The segregation of medical work has become increasingly recognized as a sign of inequality between female and male members of the medical profession. Medicine as a social organization is not a universal structure: Health care systems vary in the extent to which physicians work in the private or public sector and in the extent to which they have as a corporate body been able to influence their numbers and the character of their work. The aim of this book is not only to review and to provide an account of women's position in medicine but also to provide an analytical framework. The text revolves around three key issues that illuminate this argument: numbers, medical practice, and feminist agendas of women physicians. The issues are addressed in all the chapters but highlighted as central analytical themes in a cross-cultural context. Challenging previous studies of the medical profession, which have assumed for the most part a gender-neutral stance, Riska's text provides a unique focus. Medical Careers and Feminist Agendas presents a comprehensive, cross-national analysis of the current status of women in three societies where the economics of medical practice vary considerably: a market society, a welfare state, and a formerly communist society in transition. Aimed at a wide audience, this book will be useful for years to come in medical sociology, the sociology of professions, and women's studies. Its historical breadth, current data, and trenchant probing will furnish practitioners and policy-makers alike with a needed analytical tool. Elianne Riska is Academy Professor of the Academy of Finland, and von Willebrand-Fahlbeck Professor of Sociology at bo Academi University, Finland. She was formerly assistant and then associate professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology and College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University. Her earlier published work includes Gender, Work, and Medicine and Gendered Moods.

This innovative book critically examines patriarchal hegemonies from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives. It challenges the Anglo-American bias of much gender and language research to date by including rich new data and insights from scholars working in countries such as Colombia, Liberia, Kenya, Vietnam, Japan, Greece, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sweden, Denmark and Poland. Within these different geographical contexts, a broadly defined notion of culture incorporates organizational cultures, subcultures of society, cultures of clans or tribes as well as national cultures, depending on the meanings ascribed to the notion by people in public and private spaces. The central question of the volume, which is addressed through a variety of data, different discourse analytical approaches and research methodologies, is: How is gender constructed in social life and in patriarchal systems through discourse in different parts of the world?

This book explores the ways in which gender informs the definition and organization of management work, with specific attention to marketing. Drawing on original case studies, Chalmers examines how marketing personnel in particular firms appeal to valued and emotionally charged masculine meanings and identifications in their efforts to define the boundaries of their work activity and to establish marketing's managerial credentials against the claims of competing management occupations. By focusing on this interpenetration of masculinity projects and managerial politics, the study breaks new ground, illustrating that gender is a particularly flexible and potent resource for use in the competitive struggles shaping what management is, who manages, and how. Through the use of detailed case studies, the author takes a thorough look at the way marketing departments have emerged within companies and how marketing personnel have tried to carve out a niche for themselves by using gendered discursive techniques. The use of such strategies is aimed at securing a more crucial management role within a company, structuring boundaries and internal divisions of marketing work, shaping how various tasks are consolidated into marketing jobs, and creating distinct realms of masculine and feminine activity. As more and more women enter the field of marketing, they must navigate their way through this gendered terrain where marketers are expected to be assertive and forceful and women are expected to be feminene and supportive. Chalmers carefully traces these management politics and gendering processes in an effort to explain how gender informs the definition and organization of managing work.