Women and the Law

This is an original and incisive analysis of pressing legal issues ranging from low pay, sexual harassment, and flexible working to parental rights and reverse discrimination. The book locates women's role in the family as a contributory factor to their continued disadvantage within the paid workforce. Yet, in signalling the way forward, the author rejects the notion that the answer is to simply to slot more women into existing structures. Instead of expecting women to conform to systems which exclude and devalue caring responsibilities, she argues, real change will only occur if paid work is restructured so that both men and women can be active participants in family life as well as in the paid workforce. This book does not, however, offer single dimensional solutions. In particular, the very difficult conflicts of interest that can arise between and among women--on grounds of class or race, for instance--are directly confronted.