Monograph on the economic and social role of women, with emphasis on women's potential contribution to global economic development and future social change - covers development policy issues in improving women's social participation, particularly in rural areas and subsistence farming sectors of developing countries, and includes the role of UN and role of women's interest groups in promoting change. Maps, references and statistical tables.

Women's lives changed more in the 20th century than in any previous century. It was a period of transformation, not only of the political realm, but also the household, family and workplace. Ranging widely over Europe, this fascinating account is one of the first comprehensive surveys of its kind.

“An important and much-needed introduction to this rich and fast-growing field. Hershatter has handled a daunting task with aplomb.” —Susan L. Glosser, author of Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915–1953

This innovative text explores the unprecedented changes in the realms of politics, demography, economics, culture, knowledge, and kinship that women have brought about in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Global in reach, the book provides a comparative analysis of developments worldwide to show both progress as well as new tensions and forms of inequality that have emerged out of women’s entry into politics, wage employment, education, and the production of culture. Beginning with suffrage and moving to participation in international movements—such as anti-war, labor, and environmental rights activism—Maria Bucur explores how women have transformed the operation of states and international institutions. She focuses on the radical demographic shifts since 1900 through the prism of changing practices in women’s sexuality, from birth control practices to education. Examining the continuing economic gender gap around the world, Bucur highlights ways women have been both beneficiaries of new economic opportunities and participants in developing new forms of inequality. Considering the remarkable achievements of women in the areas of knowledge making and cultural production, the author shifts her gaze toward the future and what these changes mean in terms of gender norms and evolving kinship relations. She thus presents a new perspective on contemporary world history, centered on how women have become both the subjects and objects of seismic shifts in the political, social, and economic structures of societies across the globe.

This collection provides a range of different perspectives on women as consumers. It focuses on popular culture and its female consumers; this includes examinations of popular media and their targetting of female audiences, issues and themes associated with produce purchase.

First published in 2005. This volume documents women's 20th century wartime experiences from World War I through the recent conflicts in Bosnia. The articles cross national boundaries including France, China, Peru, Guatemala, Germany, Bosnia, the U.S. and Great Britain.. The contributors of these original essays trace the evolution of women's roles as victims of war while also showing how they have been increasingly incorporated into battle as actors and perpetrators. These comparative studies analyze war's disruptions of daily life, its effects on children, rape as a war crime, access to equal opportunity, and women's resistance to violence.

When William Chafe's The American Woman was published in 1972, it was hailed as a breakthrough in the study of women in this century. Bella Abzug praised it as "a remarkable job of historical research," and Alice Kessler-Harris called it "an extraordinarily useful synthesis of material about 20th-century women." But much has happened in the last two decades--both in terms of scholarship, and in the lives of American women. With The Paradox of Change, Chafe builds on his classic work, taking full account of the events and scholarship of the last fifteen years, as he extends his analysis into the 1990s with the rise of feminism and the New Right. Chafe conveys all the subtleties of women's paradoxical position in the United States today, showing how women have gradually entered more fully into economic and political life, but without attaining complete social equality or economic justice. Despite the gains achieved by feminist activists during the 1970s and 1980s, the tensions continued to abound between public and private roles, and the gap separating ideals of equal opportunity from the reality of economic discrimination widened. Women may have gained some new rights in the last two decades, but the feminization of poverty has also soared, with women constituting 70% of the adult poor. Moreover, a resurgence of conservatism, symbolized by the triumph of Phyllis Schlafly's anti-ERA coalition, has cast in doubt even some of the new rights of women, such as reproductive freedom. Chafe captures these complexities and contradictions with a lively combination of representative anecdotes and archival research, all backed up by statistical studies. As in The American Woman, Chafe once again examines "woman's place" throughout the 20th century, but now with a more nuanced and inclusive approach. There are insightful portraits of the continuities of women's political activism from the Progressive era through the New Deal; of the contradictory gains and losses of the World War II years; and of the various kinds of feminism that emerged out of the tumult of the 1960s. Not least, there are narratives of all the significant struggles in which women have engaged during these last ninety years--for child care, for abortion rights, and for a chance to have both a family and a career. The Paradox of Change is a wide-ranging history of 20th-century women, thoroughly researched and incisively argued. Anyone who wants to learn more about how women have shaped, and been shaped by, modern America will have to read this book.