Originally published in 1985, Women, Social Science and Public Policy looks at what difference the debate over the position of women had made to the way social scientists worked and thought, or to law and social policies at the time. Debate had been widespread during the 1960s and 1970s and this book takes stock. It avoids the standard statistics on the position of women and concentrates instead on the challenges contained in this long debate to the way research topics and method are selected – challenges in effect to the assumption of ‘business as usual’ with the addition of a few details on women. Sponsored by the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, this book is deliberately multi-disciplinary. Chapters are written by leading scholars in anthropology, economics, history, law, politics, psychology, sociology and government. These authors share both a theoretical and practical knowledge of ideas and policies. They share also a concern with analysing basic assumptions and to set Australian research and debate in an international context. This thoughtful book will be of interest to all who wish to understand the theoretical and the policy issues underpinning much of the feminist debate, and the way in which it affects their own thinking about issues of social science, social policy and social structure.

This text sets out to challenge the traditional power basis of the policy decision makers in education. It contests that others who have an equal right to be consulted and have their opinions known have been silenced, declared irrelevant, postponed and otherwise ignored. Policies have thus been formed and implemented without even a cursory feminist critical glance. The chapters in this text illustrate how to incorporate critical and feminist lenses and thus create policies to meet the lived realities, the needs, aspirations and values of women and girls. A particular focus is the primary and secondary sectors of education.

In contrast, this volume draws long overdue attention to the ways in which changing gender relations shaped the development and organization of the new social knowledge. And it challenges the privileged position that academic - and mostly male - social science has been granted in traditional histories by showing how women produced and popularized new forms of social knowledge in such places as settlement houses and the Russell Sage Foundation.

The philosophy of the social sciences considers the underlying explanatory powers of the social (or human) sciences, such as history, economics, anthropology, politics, and sociology. The type of questions covered includes the methodological (the nature of observations, laws, theories, and explanations) to the ontological — whether or not these sciences can explain human nature in a way consistent with common-sense beliefs. This Handbook is a major, comprehensive look at the key ideas in the field, is guided by several principles. The first is that the philosophy of social science should be closely connected to, and informed by, developments in the sciences themselves. The second is that the volume should appeal to practicing social scientists as well as philosophers, with the contributors being both drawn from both ranks, and speaking to ongoing controversial issues in the field. Finally, the volume promotes connections across the social sciences, with greater internal discussion and interaction across disciplinary boundaries.

This book assesses the comparability between policies promoting women's equality and the reversal of fertility decline. Based on comparative data from Canada, Australia, Britain, and to a more limited extent the USA, Alena Heitlinger examines the impact of major international instruments promoting women's equality, and national similarities and differences in women's policy machinery, provision for maternity and childcare, fiscal assistance for families with children, and the costs and benefits of fertility-related measures vis - vis immigration related measures.

This open access book explores the various dimensions of women’s empowerment in public policy in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, with a particular focus on Qatar, comparing the country to the other Gulf states. Through its rich compilation of empirical qualitative research, the text unpacks the various ways in which women’s empowerment materializes in the GCC context, providing insights into public policy perspectives in high-income rentier states more broadly. The Arab world has long been part of the global dialogue on women’s economic and political empowerment and the GCC has, over the past decade, situated women’s empowerment amongst their respective national priorities and long-term strategies. In turn, the Gulf has seen gradual implementation of policies aimed at women, specifically, in looking to attract and retain them in the labour market, and in the public sector more broadly. The collection surveys and evaluates the progress made in recent decades, paying close attention to the cultural and policy constraints still limiting women’s empowerment in the Gulf. With a key linkage to SDG5, this book is a timely text addressing the context and drivers behind policies centering on women in the Arab region, in its analysis of the interplay of international women’s empowerment discourse and regional public policy decisions. It is relevant to researchers and policy makers focused on women and gender issues in relation to social, cultural, economic, and political empowerment in the Gulf specifically, but also in the Arab world and beyond.

This volume, the first to focus exclusively on women serving on corporate boards of directors, provides the latest thinking and research findings on this increasingly important corporate governance issue. It includes censuses of women directors in a number of countries, identifies reasons for their limited numbers, indicates why appointing qualified women to boards offers competitive advantages, and suggests practical ways corporations can attract, recruit and appoint more women board members. Researchers interested in gender and corporate governance issues, companies interested in increasing their numbers of women board members, and women and men serving or hoping to serve on corporate boards will find this book of interest.

Briskin and Eliasson (professors of social science, York U., Canada and professor at the Center for Feminist Research, Uppsala U., Sweden, respectively) explore women's organizing and public policy in two northern welfare states, Canada and Sweden. They evaluate the constraints and possibilities provided by the institutional, political, and discursive contexts in both countries through analysis and comparison of key areas of public policy and the strategic interventions organized by women to challenge and reconstruct these policies. The volume's three sections address domestic policy; vehicles for organizing; and challenges to the boundaries of nation through the EU and NAFTA. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Drawing on longitudinal interviews, government records, and personal narratives, feminist sociologist Lisa Brush examines the intersection of work, welfare, and battering. Brush contrasts conventional wisdom with illuminating analyses of social change and social structures, highlighting how race and class shape women's experiences with poverty and abuse and how "domestic" violence moves out of the home and follows women to work.Brush's unique interview data on work-related control, abuse, and sabotage, together with administrative data on earnings, welfare, and restraining orders, offer new empirical insights on the impact of work requirements and other post-welfare rescission changes on the lives of low-income and battered mothers. Personal narratives provide first-hand accounts of women's perceptions of the broad forces that shape the circumstances of their everyday lives, their health, their prospects, their ambitions, and their diagnoses of their world. Deftly integrating the political and the personal, the administrative and the narrative, the economic and the emotional, Brush underscores the vital need to reexamine ideas, policies, and practices meant to keep women safe and economically productive that instead trap women in poverty and abuse.With her fresh approach to problems people often see as intractable, Brush offers a new way of calculating the costs of battering for the policy makers and practitioners concerned with the well being of poor, battered women and their families and communities.