Why do women start their own businesses? Is it solely because they are searching for financial success, or for other reasons? On the basis of detailed interviews with a number of women who have started their own businesses, this book, first published in 1985, reveals the significance of factors that are directly related to women’s experiences at home, at work, and in the wider society. The author’s analysis shows how business start-up enables many women, but not all, to achieve forms of economic and social independence that they would not otherwise enjoy. Further, they illustrate ways in which business proprietorship has a wide variety of effects upon individuals, and upon their personal relationships and life styles. They refute the notion of a single entrepreneurial experience and argue that the causes and consequences of business start-up are highly conditioned by the extent to which women are committed to traditionally prescribed roles and to profitability. The findings of this book will have important implications for the formulation of small business policies. It will also be of particular value to those interested in women’s studies and small business management.

Aristophanes and Women, first published in 1993, investigates the workings of the great Athenian comedian’s ‘women plays’ in an attempt to discern why they were in fact probably quite funny to their original audiences. It is argued that modern students, scholars, and dramatists need to consider much more closely the conditions of the plays’ ancient productions when evaluating their ostensible themes. Three plays are focused upon: Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazusae, and Ecclesiazusae. All seem to speak quite eloquently to contemporary concerns about women’s rights, the value of women’s work, and the relationships between women and war, literary representation and politics. On the one hand, Professor Taaffe tries to retrieve what an ancient Athenian audience may have l appreciated about these plays and what their central theses may have meant within that culture. On the other hand, Aristophanes is discussed from the perspective of a late twentieth-century, specifically female, reader.

First published in 1981, this book explores the reactions of some female writers to the social effects of industrial capitalism between 1778 and 1860. The period set in motion a crisis over the status of middle-class women that culminated in the constructed idea of "women’s proper sphere". This concept disguised inequities between men and women, first by asserting the reality of female power, and then by restricting it to self-sacrificing influence. In this book, Judith Newton analyses novels such as Fanny Burney’s Evelina, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte Brontë’s Villette and George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss in order to demonstrate how some female writers reacted to the issue by covertly resisting inequities of power and reconciling ideologies in their art. She argues that in this time period, novels became increasingly rebellious as well as ambivalent . Heroines were endowed with power, and emphasis was given to female ability, rather than to feminine influence.

J.K. Evans’ pioneering work explores the profound changes in the social, economic and legal condition of Roman women, which, it is argued, were necessary consequences of two centuries of near-continuous warfare as Rome expanded from city-state to empire. Bridging the gap that has isolated the specialised studies of Roman women and children from the more traditional political and social concerns of historians, J.K. Evans’ investigation ranges from Cicero’s wife Terentia to the anonymous spouse of the peasant-soldier Ligustinus, charting the severe erosion of the very institutions that kept women and children in thrall. War, Women and Children in Ancient Rome will be of interest not only to classicists and historians of antiquity but also to sociologists and anthropologists, while it will similarly prove an indispensable reference work for historians of women and the family.

First published in 1992, this book is an historical introduction to a wide range of women’s movements from the late eighteenth-century to the date of its publication. It describes economic, social and political ideas which have inspired women to organize, not only in Europe and North America, but also in the Third World. Sheila Rowbotham outlines a long history of women’s challenges to the gender bias in political and economical concepts. She shows women laying claim to rights and citizenship, while contesting male definitions of their scope, and seeking to enlarge the meaning of economy through action around consumption and production, environmental protests and welfare projects.

With the growth of popular literary forms, particularly the periodical, during the eighteenth century, women began to assume an unprecedented place in print culture as readers and writers. Yet at the same time the very textual practices of that culture inscribed women within an increasingly restrictive and oppressive set of representations. First published in 1989, this title examines the emergence and dramatic growth of periodical literature, showing how the journals solicited women as subscribers and contributors, whilst also attempting to regulate their conduct through the promotion of exemplary feminine types. By enclosing its female readership within a discourse that defined women in terms of love, matrimony, the family, and the home, the English periodical became one of the main linguistic sites for the construction of the eighteenth-century ideology of domestic womanhood. Based on the close scrutiny of the popular periodical press between 1690 and 1760, including journals such as the Athenian Mercury, the Tatler, and the Spectator, this study will be of particular value to any student of the relationship between women and print culture, the development of women's magazines, and the study of literary audiences.

Publisher description

First published in 1977, Women, Crime and Criminology presents a feminist critique of classical and contemporary theories of female criminality. It addresses the issue that criminology literature has, throughout history, been predominantly male-oriented, always treating female criminality as marginal to the 'proper' study of crime in society. Carol Smart explores a new direction in criminology, and the sociology of deviance, by investigating female crime from a committed feminist position. Examining the types of offences committed by female offenders, Smart points to the fallacies inherent in a reliance on official statistics and shows the deficiencies of the popular argument that female emancipation has caused an increase in female crime rates. She deals with studies of prostitution and rape and considers the treatment of women - as offenders and victims - by the criminal law, the police and courts, and the penal system. Particular attention is given to the question of lenient treatment for female offenders with the conclusion that women and girls are, in some important instances, actually discriminated against in our legal and penal systems. The relationship between female criminality and mental illness is discussed and the author concludes by dealing with some of the problems inherent in developing a feminist criminology.

This title was first published in 2002. Gender has become a culturally laden signifier. Sometimes used to differentiate the social from the biological, gender itself has become gendered. In common parlance gender issues often slide inexorably into women's issues and are in that way designated as marginal and outside the concerns and lives of ordinary men and women. In this book, signifiers such as gender, worker and family are unpacked and suggestions are made as to how common usage of these signifiers reinforce existing practices and act as barriers to change. Some of these changes are legal, others are social and others are driven by political and policy agendas. By looking at five areas: equal opportunity law, family law, industrial relations law, social welfare law and taxation law, which are all profoundly gendered, the author examines ways in which men and women see their roles and choices and how these are related to the state, as citizens. The author then examines the definition of citizenship and looks in detail at the concept of the unencumbered citizen, who is unencumbered by interpersonal obligations, responsibilities and beliefs, using comparative material from Australia, North America and the United Kingdom.