ABSTRACT
Many of the available empirical data clearly suggest that British women's public and private lives have changed markedly during the past few decades. While these developments are not necessarily any more significant than social transitions in earlier eras, and space does not allow for a comprehensive review here, it is nonetheless hard to ignore claims like the assertion that women's participation in employment since 1979 has risen roughly in proportion with a similar decline in men's, and that it is now more likely for women to work for money than not to do so (McDowell, 2001, p. 351; Bristow, 2002a, p. 16). Moreover, although workplace gender equality is still a long way off and the evidence for any progress in this regard is mixed (see—for example, McDowell, 2001; Brewis and Linstead, 2004), some British women do appear, at entry level at least, to be beating men ‘at their own game’. For example, between 1981 and 1991, numbers of female general managers increased by 61 per cent, as compared with an increase of 9 per cent in the same occupational category for men (Walby, 1997, p. 37). Similarly, London Chamber of Commerce data show that, of the 450 000 professional jobs created in the UK between 1981 and 1996, 69 per cent were taken by women, and those in the capital did especially well in this regard (McDowell, 2001, p. 351; Charles, 2002, p. 26).
