This is the only such book to be attempted in Australia. It covers over 200 years of history, and includes discussion of sexual exchange in Australia prior to European colonisation. It is relevant to the whole of Australia as well as having a strong international dimension: the content is based on extensive research from archives in all Australian capital cities as well as London and Geneva and draws on oral interviews with women over a period of more than 25 years. It makes extensive use of narratives, individual life stories and the 'voices' of prostitutes to construct an engaging, accessible text.""Selling Sex"" provides the first comprehensive history of prostitution in Australia from before European colonisation to the present, and situates this history within an international context of labour migration and policy formation. It draws on extensive archival research and interviews to chart the ways in which prostitution contributed not just to women's economic survival but also to broader processes of colonisation and nation-building.

Australia has a strong tradition of labour historiography, which until recently has been focused on the institutions of the labour movement: trade unions and labour parties. This book shifts the focus back to the workplace and looks at how and why the nature of work changed during the period from the late nineteenth century to World War II. The book focuses on three industries in the state of Victoria: clothing, bootmaking, and printing. Concerned with the complex relationship between economic and technological change, the nature of sexual division in the workforce, and the role of union, employer and state activists, it carefully traces the impact of all of these factors on wage levels for men and women. The treatment of these themes touches on wide historical issues, as we follow the fortunes of Victorian manufacturing, and consider the political strategies of the trade unions of the time and the state's response to them. The study is also an important piece of social history, evoking the nature of work for many Australians of the period.

Women and the Great War focuses on women's experiences during the period of violent conflict - the Great War. It examines the role of women as peace activists as well as their role in the military and support services. Source materials, including historical documents, photographs and cartoons, together with student activities, are used to focus the reader on the way violent conflict altered women's traditional roles.