This text aims to assist nurses grasping the complex context of current issues surrounding the process of needs assessment so that they could contribute to the debates and develop their practice appropriately.

Nursing history has become a reflective area of scholarship, which recognizes the inescapable social, political, economic and cultural factors infuencing the profession. This volume highlights the significant contribution that researching nursing history has to make in settling a new intellectual and political agenda for nurses. Reflecting the international scale of current research, 17 contributors look at nursing from different perspectives, as it has developed under different regimes and ideologies and at different points in time in America, Australia, Britain, Germany, India, the Phillipines and South Africa. They examine the ways in which the nursing workforce is segmented and stratified along race, class and gender lines and how differences of culture undermine attempts to theorise nursing and healh care in universal terms. Comparing the problems and potential of the equal rights and difference approaches, they propose strategies for achieving greater recognition for nursing, to bring it into line with other related, yet male-dominated professions within the health care arena.

Nursing history has become a reflective area of scholarship, which recognizes the inescapable social, political, economic and cultural factors infuencing the profession. This volume highlights the significant contribution that researching nursing history has to make in settling a new intellectual and political agenda for nurses. Reflecting the international scale of current research, 17 contributors look at nursing from different perspectives, as it has developed under different regimes and ideologies and at different points in time in America, Australia, Britain, Germany, India, the Phillipines and South Africa. They examine the ways in which the nursing workforce is segmented and stratified along race, class and gender lines and how differences of culture undermine attempts to theorise nursing and healh care in universal terms. Comparing the problems and potential of the "equal" rights and "difference" approaches, they propose strategies for achieving greater recognition for nursing, to bring it into line with other related, yet male-dominated professions within the health care arena.

When Josephine Butler died in 1906, she was declared by Millicent Fawcett to have been 'the most distinguished Englishwoman of the nineteenth century'. With impassioned speeches and fiery writing, Butler's campaigns for women's rights shook Victorian society to its core and became a force for change that has shaped modern Britain. As well as campaigning for women's suffrage and for married women's property rights she was a tireless advocate of women's access to higher education and of equality in the workplace. Her greatest achievement was to change social attitudes to women and children forced into prostitution, and to expose the sex-trafficking business - both of which resulted in new, more humane legislation. But how did the physically frail wife of a schoolmaster become a leading social reformer? In this brief introduction Jane Robinson explores Butler's fascinating life and describes how her progressive politics, her anger at injustice and her passionate Christianity combined to create a vibrant legacy that lasts to this day.

Everyone knows three things about the Women's Institute: that they spent the war making jam; the sensational Calendar Girls were WI; and, more recently, that slow-handclapping of Tony Blair. But there's so much more to this remarkable Movement. Over 200,000 women in the UK belong to the WI and their membership is growing. They cross class and religion,include all ages -from students and metropolitan young professionals, such as the Shoreditch Sisters,to rural centenarians -with passions that range from supporting the 1920s Bastardy Bill (in response to a wartime legacy of illegitimate babies) to the current SOS for Honey Bees campaign. It was founded in 1915, not by worthy ladies in tweeds but by the feistiest women in the country, including suffragettes, academics and social crusaders who discovered the heady power of sisterhood, changing women's lives and their world in the process. Certainly its members boiled jam and sang ' Jerusalem ', but they also made history. This fascinating book reveals for the first time how they are - and always were - a force to be reckoned with.

You have probably not heard of Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon but you certainly should have done. Name any 'modern' human rights movement, and she was a pioneer: feminism, equal opportunities, diversity, inclusion, mental health awareness, Black Lives Matter. While her name has been omitted from too many history books, it was Barbara that opened the doors for more famous names to walk through. And her influence owed as much to who she was as to what she did: people loved her for her robust sense of humour, cheerfulness and indiscriminate acts of kindness. This is a celebration of the life of the founder of Britain's suffrage movement: campaigner for equal opportunity in the workplace, the law, at home and beyond. Founder of Girton, the first university college for women, a committed activist for human rights, fervently anti-slavery, she was also one of Victorian England's finest female painters. Jane Robinson's brilliant new book shines a light on a remarkable woman who lived on her own terms and to whom we owe a huge debt.

There is nothing quite like parrot pie for breakfast. First one must catch one's parrot, of course, and build the hearth to bake it, but that is all in a days work for the women you will meet in this riveting anthology, whose experiences in settling the wildernesses of the world challenged to the limits their spirit, resourcefulness, and even survival.

Real ladies do not travel - or so it was once said. This collection of women's travel writing dispels the notion by showing how there are few corners of the world that have not been visited by women travellers. Jane Robinson takes us on an exhilarating journey through sixteen centuries of travel writing, in the company of Isabella Bird, Karen Blixen, Christina Dodwell, Jan Morris, Dervla Murphy, Freya Stark, Rebecca West, and many more.

It is a myth that either of the World Wars liberated women. The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919 was one of the most significant pieces of legislation in modern Britain. It marked at once political watershed and a social revolution; the point at which women of 21 and over were recognised in law as being as competent as men. But were they? What actually happened when this bill was passed? This is the story of what happened next. Ladies Can't Climb Ladders focuses on the lives of six women - six pioneers - forging paths in the fields of medicine, law, academia, architecture, engineering and the church. Robinson's startling study into the public and private lives of these women sheds light not on the desires and ambitions of her subjects but how family and society responded to the working woman and what their legacy looks like today. This book is written in their honour. It is a book about live subjects: equal opportunity, the gender pay gap, and whether women can expect, or indeed deserve, to have it at all. 'An important and crackingly good read.' - Telegraph

The 'Greatest Black Briton in History' triumphed over the Crimea and Victorian England. "The Times" called her a heroine, Florence Nightingale called her a brothel-keeping quack, and Queen Victoria's nephew called her, simply, 'Mammy' - Mary Seacole was one of the most eccentric and charismatic women of her era. Born at her mother's hotel in Jamaica in 1805, she became an independent 'doctress' combining the herbal remedies of her African ancestry with sound surgical techniques. On the outbreak of the Crimean War, she arrived in London desperate to join Florence Nightingale at the Front, but the authorities refused to see her. Being black, nearly 50, rather stout, and gloriously loud in every way, she was obviously unsuitable. Undaunted, Mary travelled to Balaklava under her own steam to build the 'British Hotel', just behind the lines. It was an outrageous venture, and a huge success - she became known and loved by everyone from the rank and file to the royal family. For more than a century after her death this remarkable woman was all but forgotten. This, the first full-length biography of a Victorian celebrity recently voted the greatest black Briton in history, brings Mary Seacole centre stage at last.

_______ 'A history book that should be read by all' - Stylist. Set against the background of the campaign for women to win the vote, this is a story of the ordinary people effecting extraordinary change. 1913: the last long summer before the war. The country is gripped by suffragette fever. These impassioned crusaders have their admirers; some agree with their aims if not their forceful methods, while others are aghast at the thought of giving any female a vote. Meanwhile, hundreds of women are stepping out on to the streets of Britain. They are the suffragists: non-militant campaigners for the vote, on an astonishing six-week protest march they call the Great Pilgrimage. Rich and poor, young and old, they defy convention, risking jobs, family relationships and even their lives to persuade the country to listen to them. Fresh and original, full of vivid detail and moments of high drama, Hearts and Minds is both funny and incredibly moving, important and wonderfully entertaining.

Jane Robinson's Bluestockings is the incredible story of the fight for female education in Britain. In 1869, when five women enrolled at university for the first time in British history, the average female brain was thought to be 150 grams lighter than a man's. Doctors warned that if women studied too hard their wombs would wither and die. When the Cambridge Senate held a vote on whether women students should be allowed official membership of the university, there was a full-scale riot. Despite the prejudice and the terrible sacrifices they faced, women from all backgrounds persevered and paved the way for the generations who have followed them since. By the 1920s, being an 'undergraduette' was considered quite the fashionable thing; by the 1930s, women were emerging from universities as anything from aviation engineers to professional academics. Bluestockings tells an inspiring story - of defiance and determination, of colourful eccentricity and at times heartbreaking loneliness, as well as of passionate friendships, midnight cocoa-parties and glorious self-discovery. 'Social history of the best kind' Sunday Times 'Modern girls need reminding of the long battle, and Jane Robinson's fine book does just that, charting the lives and struggles of campaigners ... But there is more joy than sorrow' Mail on Sunday Jane Robinson was born in Edinburgh and brought up in Yorkshire. Her books about women travellers and pioneers have established her as an engaging social historian with an appreciative eye for eccentricity. Jane lives near Oxford with her husband and two sons.