Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence.
The #MeToo movement sparked many debates and increased the demand for more problematized perspectives on the issue of sexual harassment.
This book opens for new understandings of sexual harassment by bringing researchers, writers, and policymakers in the Nordic region into dialogue in an ambitious volume. It asks what role juridical frameworks can and should play in prevention and raises questions about how the image of Nordic states – as gender equal, colour blind and with strong welfare – affects the work against sexual harassment in the region.
Re-imagining definitions of justice, violence, exploitation and work, this book offers knowledge of immediate importance for everyone working to prevent sexual harassment, through research, policy making, or in everyday practice.
ePDF and ePUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
The Nordic countries are regarded as frontrunners in promoting equality, yet women’s experiences on the ground are in many ways at odds with this rhetoric.
Putting the spotlight on the lived experiences of women working in tech-driven research and innovation areas in the Nordic countries, this volume explores why, despite numerous programmes, women continue to constitute a minority in these sectors.
The contributors flesh out the differences and similarities across different Nordic countries and explore how the shifts in labour market conditions have impacted on women in Research and Innovation.
This is an invaluable contribution to global debates around the mechanisms that maintain gendered structures in Research and Innovation, from academia to biotechnology and IT.
Does flexible working really provide a better work-life balance?
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, flexible working has become the norm for many workers. This volume offers an original examination of flexible working using data from 30 European countries and drawing on studies conducted in Australia, the US and India. Rather than providing a better work-life balance, the book reveals how flexible working can lead to exploitation, which manifests differently for women and men, such as more care responsibilities or increased working hours.
Taking a critical stance, this book investigates the potential risks and benefits of flexible working and provides crucial policy recommendations for overcoming the negative consequences.
Spanning the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, this comparative study brings maternal workers’ politicized voices to the centre of contemporary debates on childcare, work and gender.
The book illustrates how maternal workers continue to organize against low pay, exploitative working conditions and state retrenchment and provides a unique theorization of feminist divisions and solidarities.
Bringing together social reproduction with maternal studies, this is a resonating call to build a cross-sectoral, intersectional movement around childcare. Maud Perrier shows why social reproduction needs to be at the centre of a critical theory of work, care and mothering for post-pandemic times.
This book explores the representation of women and their interests in the world of work across four trade unions in France and the UK.
Drawing on case studies of the careers of 100 activists and a longitudinal study of the trade unions' struggle for equal pay in the UK, it unveils the social, organizational, and political conditions that contribute to the reproduction of gender inequalities or, on the contrary, allow the promotion of equality.
Guillaume’s nuanced evaluation is a call to redefine the role of trade unions in the delivering of gender equality, contributing to broader debates on the effectiveness of equality policies and the enforcement of equality legislation.
Frances C. Galt explores the role of trade unions and women’s activism in the British film and television industries in this important contribution to debates around gender inequality.
The book traces the influence of the union for technicians and other behind-the-camera workers and examines the relationship between gender and class in the labour movement. Drawing on previously unseen archival material and oral history interviews with activists, it casts new light on women’s experiences of union participation and feminism over nine decades. As concerns about the gender pay gap, women’s rights and harassment continue, it assesses historical progress and points the way to further change in film and TV.
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence.
Drawing from the EU-funded DomEQUAL research project across 9 countries in Europe, South America and Asia, this comparative study explores the conditions of domestic workers around the world and the campaigns they are conducting to improve their labour rights.
The book showcases how domestic workers’ movements put ‘intersectionality in action’ in representing the interest of various marginalized social groups from migrants and low-income groups to racialized and rural girls and women.
Casting light on issues such as subjectification, and collective organizing on the part of a category of workers conventionally regarded as unorganizable, this ambitious volume will be invaluable for scholars, policy makers and activists alike.
Now available in paperback with a new preface and foreword by Stella Nkomo.
How might imperialist, masculinist and white supremacist grips on leadership be loosened? In this thought-provoking and accessible new study, Helena Liu suggests that anti-racist feminism can challenge conventional models and practices of power.
Combining a critical review of leadership theory with enlightening examples from around the world, the book shows how the intellectual and activist elements of feminist movements provide antidotes to contemporary leadership research and practice. For those interested in management, organisation, feminism, race and many more studies, it sets the agenda for a radical reimagining of control and leadership in all its forms.
Shortlisted for the BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize 2019.
What’s it really like to be a mother with a career working flexibly?
Drawing on over 100 hours of interview data, this book is the first to go inside women’s work and family lives in a year of working flexibly.
The private labours of going part-time, job sharing, and home working are brought to life with vivid personal stories.
Taking a sociological and feminist perspective, it explores contemporary motherhood, work-life balance, emotional work in families, couples and housework, maternity transitions, interactions with employers, work design and workplace cultures, and employment policies.
It concludes that there is an opportunity to make employment and family life work better together and offers unique insights from women’s lived experiences on how to do it.
Women are encouraged to believe that they can occupy top jobs in society by the example of other women thriving in their careers. Who better to be a role model for career success than your mother? Paradoxically, this book shows that having a mother as a role model, even for graduates of top universities, does not predict daughters progressing in their own careers.
It finds that mothers with careers, whilst highly influential in their daughters’ choice of career path, rarely mentor their daughters as they progress. This is partly explained by ‘quiet ambition’ – the tendency of women to be modest about their achievements. Bigger issues are the twin pressures from contemporary motherhood and workplace culture that ironically lead career women’s daughters to believe that being a ‘good mother’ means working part-time. This stalls career progress.
Based on a large, cross-generational qualitative sample, this book offers a timely and original perspective on the debate about gender equality in leadership positions.
