Television and film not only entertain and reflect social change, they may also participate and influence these changes -- the recent success of The Full Monty and Billy Elliot show popular British comedy based on such painful social transformations.

Looking at Class brings together film and television practitioners with academic students of cultural and economic change to examine the media representation of the British working class in the twentieth century -- a time of decline for the manual working class when a complex service-based economy emerged. The book covers a large range of genres from documentaries to soaps and shows that complex cultural transitions can be communicated clearly in prose as well as in screen drama.

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."

This collection explores the effects of new technologies on women's employment and on the nature of women's work in the Third World. The challenges women face in less affluent communities in adjusting to new technologies are discussed along with their responses and organizing strategies. Contributors outline the roles that family, ideology, state policies and trade union structures can play in distributing information on technology-related employment between women and men. The differences in the interests and needs of different groups of women are highlighted, challenging the concept of a monolithic, specifically feminine vision of technology and science. A critique of postmodernism and ecofeminism is also provided. In looking at the impact of information technology on the working lives of women in the Third World, this volume lays a foundation for further debate and research in this area.

Television and film not only entertain and reflect social change, they may also participate and influence these changes -- the recent success of The Full Monty and Billy Elliot show popular British comedy based on such painful social transformations.

Looking at Class brings together film and television practitioners with academic students of cultural and economic change to examine the media representation of the British working class in the twentieth century -- a time of decline for the manual working class when a complex service-based economy emerged. The book covers a large range of genres from documentaries to soaps and shows that complex cultural transitions can be communicated clearly in prose as well as in screen drama.

Series Information:
UNU/INTECH Studies in New Technology and Development

"Dignity and Daily Bread" compares the lives of women in the First and Third worlds and examines how women have organized forms of production themselves. Covering a wide range of issues and areas, from cotton production in Bombay, conditions in Mexico and in some of the Far East economies, the contributors begin to break down some of the ideological barriers that colonialism and racism build among women. The immediacy of the accounts highlights women's conditions in very different patriarchal societies.

"Dignity and Daily Bread" compares the lives of women in the First and Third worlds and examines how women have organized forms of production themselves. Covering a wide range of issues and areas, from cotton production in Bombay, conditions in Mexico and in some of the Far East economies, the contributors begin to break down some of the ideological barriers that colonialism and racism build among women. The immediacy of the accounts highlights women's conditions in very different patriarchal societies.

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.

In early 1917, as Britain was bogged down in a war it feared would never end, Alice Wheeldon, her two daughters, and her son were brought to trial and imprisoned for plotting the assassination of Prime Minister Lloyd George, who they believed had betrayed the suffrage movement. In this highly evocative and haunting play, British historian and feminist Sheila Rowbotham illuminates the lives and struggles of those who opposed the war. The Wheeldons' controversial trial became something of a cause celebre--a show trial at the height of the First World War--based on fabricated evidence from a criminally insane fantasist, "Alex Gordon," who was working for an undercover intelligence agency. It was a travesty of justice. Friends of Alice Wheeldon is combined here with Rowbotham's extended essay, "Rebel Networks in the First World War," that gives a historical overview of the political and social forces that converged upon the Wheeldon family and friends. First published nearly thirty years ago, this new edition points readers to subsequent research into the case and the ongoing campaign to clear Alice Wheeldon's name. It offers a necessary corrective to the more triumphalist commemorations of the First World War.

A generation ago we wrote Beyond the Fragments. Inspired by the activism of the 1970s, and facing the imminent triumph of the right under Margaret Thatcher, we sought to apply our experiences as feminists to creating stronger bonds of solidarity in a new kind of left movement. Since then the obstacles facing us have grown formidably; deepening recession, environmental pollution, falling real wages and savage welfare cuts. New forms of resistance have appeared, but how are they to coalesce? In our three new essays to this new edition we return to the fraught question of how to consolidate diverse upsurges of rebellion into effective, open democratic left coalitions.

In this powerful memoir Sheila Rowbotham looks back at her life as a participant in the women's liberation movement, left politics and the creative radical culture of a decade in which freedom and equality seemed possible. She reveals the tremendous efforts that were made to transform attitudes and feelings, as well as daily life. After addressing the first British Women's Liberation Conference at Ruskin College, Oxford in 1970, she went on to encourage night cleaners to unionise, to campaign for nurseries and abortion rights. She played an influential role in discussions of socialist feminist ideas and her books and journalism attracted an international readership. Written with generosity and humour Daring to Hope recreates grassroots networks, communal houses and squats, bringing alive a shared impetus to organise collectively and to love without jealousy or domination. It conveys the shifts occurring in politics and society through kernels of personal experience. The result is a book about liberation in the widest sense.

Composed in 1790, Mary Wollstonecraft's seminal feminist tract A Vindication of the Rights of Woman broke new ground in its demand for women's education. A Vindication remains one of history's most important and elegant broadsides against sexual oppression. In her introduction, renowned socialist feminist Sheila Rowbotham casts Wollstonecraft's life and work in a new light.

At the beginning of the decade renowned historian Sheila Rowbotham was a rebellious sixteen-year-old at a Methodist boarding school in the north-east of England, reading Sartre and dreaming of Paris. By the end of the sixties she was a seasoned political activist, planning Britain's first-ever women's liberation conference, and beginning to find her voice as a writer. Her story of the intervening years moves from coffee bars in Leeds to the Sorbonne and Oxford University, where she arrives wearing frayed Levis and clutching a volume of Rimbaud. A participant in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, she was also a member of the editorial board of the notorious revolutionary newspaper Black Dwarf. While faithful to the exhilaration and enthusiasm of the sixties, Rowbotham is also wryly amusing about her younger self. When Jean-Luc Godard wanted to film her in the nude, she dithered between principle and vanity. Wearing the shortest of mini skirts she argued passionately for women's liberation. Promise of a Dream is a moving, witty and poignant recollection of a time when young women were breaking all the rules about sex, politics and their place in the world. Sheila Rowbotham was, and remains, one of their most effective and endearing voices.

In early 1917, as Britain was bogged down in a war it feared would never end, Alice Wheeldon, her two daughters, and her son were brought to trial and imprisoned for plotting the assassination of Prime Minister Lloyd George, who they believed had betrayed the suffrage movement. In this highly evocative and haunting play, British historian and feminist Sheila Rowbotham illuminates the lives and struggles of those who opposed the war. The Wheeldons' controversial trial became something of a cause celebre--a show trial at the height of the First World War--based on fabricated evidence from a criminally insane fantasist, "Alex Gordon," who was working for an undercover intelligence agency. It was a travesty of justice. Friends of Alice Wheeldon is combined here with Rowbotham's extended essay, "Rebel Networks in the First World War," that gives a historical overview of the political and social forces that converged upon the Wheeldon family and friends. First published nearly thirty years ago, this new edition points readers to subsequent research into the case and the ongoing campaign to clear Alice Wheeldon's name. It offers a necessary corrective to the more triumphalist commemorations of the First World War.

This play re-enacts the 1917 trial and imprisonment of Alice Wheeldon, the renowned suffragist, for her alleged role in plotting to assassinate the Prime Minister Lloyd George. It is prefaced by an extended essay 'Rebel Networks in the First World War'. With claustrophobia and anger, the play recounts how Wheeldon's involvement in socialism, suffragism and the anti-war movement did not endear her to the establishment, and in times of growing class antagonism and war how the government needed to create a traitor. The controversial trial became something of a cause celebre - a show trial at the height of the First World War - based on fabricated evidence from the criminally insane fantasist 'Alex Gordon'. It was a travesty of justice. First published nearly thirty years ago, this edition points readers to subsequent research into the case and the ongoing campaign to clear the name of Alice Wheeldon.

A groundbreaking contribution to debates on women's oppression and consciousness, and the connections between socialism and feminism. Examining feminist consciousness from various vantage points - social, sexual, cultural and economic - Sheila Rowbotham identifies the social conditions under which it developed, showing how the roles women take on within the capitalist economy have shaped ideas about family and sexuality.

This classic book provides a historical overview of feminist strands among the modern revolutionary movements of Russia, China and the Third World. Sheila Rowbotham shows how women rose against the dual challenges of an unjust state system and social-sexual prejudice. Women, Resistance and Revolution is an invaluable historical study, as well as a trove of anecdote and example fit to inspire today's generation of feminist thinkers and activists.

From the 1880s to the 1920s, a profound social awakening among women extended the possibilities of change far beyond the struggle for the vote. Amid the growth of globalized trade, mass production, immigration and urban slums, American and British women broke with custom and prejudice. Taking off corsets, forming free unions, living communally, buying ethically, joining trade unions, doing social work in settlements, these "dreamers of a new day" challenged ideas about sexuality, mothering, housework, the economy and citizenship. Drawing on a wealth of research, Sheila Rowbotham has written a groundbreaking new history that shows how women created much of the fabric of modern life. These innovative dreamers raised questions that remain at the forefront of our twenty-first-century lives.

The gay socialist writer Edward Carpenter had an extraordinary impact on the cultural and political landscape of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A mystic advocate of, among other causes, free love, recycling, nudism, women's suffrage and prison reform, his work anticipated the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Sheila Rowbotham's highly acclaimed biography situates Carpenter's life and thought in relation to the social, aesthetic and intellectual movements of his day, and explores his friendships with figures such as Walt Whitman, E.M. Forster, Isadora Duncan and Emma Goldman. Edward Carpenter is a compelling portrait of a man described by contemporaries as a 'weather-vane' for his times.

Globalization has intensified the pressures on poor women. They have resisted in both the North and the South in movements that are exclusively female and in others where women play a significant part. This book brings together scholars and organizers to record and analyze women's grassroots activism in two key areas: claims to livelihood and human rights. Through cases ranging from the British miners' strike to making gender central to the Guatemalan peace process, the book documents activists challenging the boundaries of prevailing assumptions of work, environment, reproduction, community, democracy and indeed politics. It contributes to the ongoing debate about the scope of women's movements, while demonstrating how women's activism around needs and rights is a crucial element in the global struggle for equality and justice. Essential reading for students and academics in women's studies, development, politics, sociology, geography and labour studies - as well as for activists everywhere.

In this classic study of women in Britain from the Puritan revolution of the mid-seventeenth century to the 1930s, Sheila Rowbotham shows how class and sex, work and the family, personal life and social pressures have shaped and hindered women's struggles for equality. She explores the different effects that changes in the process of production have on middle-class and working-class women; why birth control and the organisation of working women have been perceived as threatening to traditional male control of the family; how paid work and work in the home are intricately related and determine the social valuation of women - and why these and many other issues have continued to arise in different form throughout modern history.