Gender studies: women

Outsourcing of domestic work in the UK has been steadily rising since the 1970s, but little research has considered White British women. This book argues that outsourced domestic cleaning can either be done as mental and manual skilled work or as manual and ‘natural’ emotional/affective labour, depending on the work conditions.

This third edition looks at how several decades of feminist social action have changed women’s place in the world today and updates some of the perennial challenges facing women globally to engage with new issues, including digital exclusion, sustainable development and environmental justice.

Women, Politics and the Public Sphere focuses intellectually on the legacy of eighteenth century women thinkers, writers and political philosophers in understanding the emergence of women public intellectuals in the US and UK and highlights how women public intellectuals now reflect much more social and cultural diversity.

Despite the rise in research and public awareness about rape culture and gendered violence, it remains a serious problem. Using case studies from the US and UK this book explains how it happens, what it means and how it can be contested.

This book examines how responses by the state shape a woman’s citizenship long after she has escaped from a violent partner. It investigates the effects of intimate partner violence on everyday life including housing, employment, mental health and social participation and offers critical insights for the development of social policy and practice.

Ann Oakley develops a sociology of the research process, telling how a research project on caring and social support is undertaken. It has much resonance for social science researchers and others interested in the experiences of mothers, and the relations between social research, academic knowledge and public policy.

Ann Oakley interviewed 60 women to find out what it’s really like to have a baby. She discusses whether and why women want to become pregnant, how they imagine motherhood to be, the experience of birth, post-natal depression, feeding and caring routines and the challenges for the domestic division of labour and to fathers.

Ann Oakley analysed the perceptions of 40 urban housewives around housework, their feelings of monotony and fragmentation, the length of their working week, the importance of standards and routines, and their attitudes to different household tasks. This classic book paved the way for the sociological study of many more aspects of women’s lives.

This book is the first on femicide in Europe and presents the findings of a 4 year project discussing various aspects of femicide. It looks at the prevention programmes and comparative quantitative and qualitative data collection, as well as the impact of culture. It proposes the establishment of an European Observatory on Femicide.

This book is the first to go inside women’s work and family lives in a year of working flexibly. The private labours of going part-time, job sharing, and home working are brought to life with vivid personal stories, concluding that there is an opportunity to make employment and family life work better together.

With real-life accounts of women’s experiences, and based on the author’s original research, this book challenges the culture of victim-blaming and shows how much energy women put into avoiding sexual violence in public spaces.

Irish law only currently allows for abortion where the life of the pregnant woman is at risk. A constitutional referendum will be held in 2018 to liberalise abortion law. This book offers practical proposals for policymakers and advocates, including model legislation, making it an essential campaigning tool leading up to the referendum.