Jean H. Quataert

Connecting spheres : women in the Western world, 1500 to the present

Combining modern feminist thought with the main themes of Western civilization, this book puts women back into history. From Italy to Kenya, from Britain to Russia, it examines the impact of religious reformation, political centralization, scientific, industrial, and political revolutions, world markets, and welfare states on women of diverse backgrounds, occupations, and classes, and demonstrates that they have indeed had a profound influence on Western history in the last 500 years.

A knowledge revolution: Transnational feminist contributions to international development agendas and policies, 1965–1995

The article traces the impact of feminist activists and development experts from around the world who, from the 1960s to the 1990s, pushed for greater attention to women’s life situations in the emerging and increasingly contentious international debates about economic growth. Increasingly well-positioned within UN commissions, bureaus, and development agencies, these women used the statistical facts about policy impacts to redefine economic development agendas along feminist lines. This information ‘from below’ produced a ‘knowledge revolution’ that circulated widely within the UN system with far-reaching consequences for feminist advocacy. The new knowledge deepened understandings of rights claims even as its meanings, over time, led to competing responses among feminists to the continuing challenges of global inequality. The article is based on extensive published primary sources and relevant secondary interdisciplinary literature.

Birth Control in Germany, 1871-1933.

By studying the dissemination and acceptance of ideas of birth control James Woycke attempts to show that attitudes quite similar to those found in liberal circles today were widespread among ordinary men and women in Germany from the turn of the century.

Reviews : Richard J. Evans, Comrades and Sisters: Feminism, Socialism and Pacifism in Europe 1870-1945, Wheatsheaf Books/St Martin's Press, 1987; xii + 203 pp.; £28.50

times display an irritating desire to make frequent allusions to other secondary work. Inasmuch as culture is concerned with shared attitudes and dispositions, it would have been rewarding to come across more autobiographical and oral evidence. As it is, the paper which offers something novel m this respect and which, paradoxically, follows older historical conventions most closely is the work of a sociologist, H.F. Moorhouse. His study of the spare-time work directed to the backyard construction of ’hot-rod’, supercharged cars in the USA is a small and self-contained composition. It makes a simple but seminal point about the nebulous boundary separating labour and leisure; and deploys a hitherto unused body of material, from the special interest magazines catering for these enthusiasts. In a way, his is the least ambitious essay in the book, but also the one which fulfils its purpose most elegantly and economically.