Introduced by Sheila Rowbotham

Published in association with New Left Review

Second-wave feminism is now in its third decade. The movement that began in the 1960s in the United States has gone through many permutations, continuously emerging in new forms in different parts of the world. Awareness of gender has entered popular culture, redrawn political divisions and impinged on national economies and international institutions.

Mapping the Women's Movement seeks to discern the contrasts and common patterns in the experience of a movement which is still constrained by national boundaries. The collection focuses on the industrialized world, tracing the development of feminism in the United States, France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Russia, Poland and Japan, and provides a comparative account of successes and failures in each country. Monica Threlfall and Sheila Rowbotham suggest that feminist political interventions have been far more successful in the sphere of the state and institutional and legal reform than the movement's early emphasis on personal transformation might have presaged. But, despite the advances women have made in political life, feminism has failed to prevent the growth of a “second-class” female labour force and the erosion of forms of social provision of particular importance to women.

Contributors: Bianca Beccalli, Johanna Brenner, Jane Jenson, Vera Mackie, Evelyn Mahon, Maxine Molyneux, Sheila Rowbotham, Monica Threlfall, Peggy Watson

Monica Threlfall teaches in the Department of European Studies, Loughborough University. Her publications and research are concerned with feminism and the position of women in the European Union.