A Woman's Prerogative addresses the infinite power of women. It details how they can effect control over just about anyone in their surrounds and specifically addresses the methodology she can or should employ to effect and realize the power. The book teaches, in simple ways, how any woman can control her life by controlling those within it. It provides an insight few women understand and all women should learn.

Marrese traces the extension of noblewomen's right to property and places this story in the broader context of the evolution of private property in Russia before the Great Reforms of the 1860s."--BOOK JACKET.

Based on Enrique Mayer’s 30 years of research in Peru, this collection of new and revised essays presents in one accessible volume Mayer’s most significant statements on Andean peasant economies from pre-colonial times to the present. The Articulated Peasant is therefore noteworthy as a sustained examination of household economies through changing historical circumstances, while considering also the relationship of the environment to systems of land use, agricultural production, and economic exchange among ecological zones. Though the volume stresses the Andean context, its relevancy is wider. It will resonate with those who are struggling with issues of survival and development in Latin America or elsewhere where units of production and consumption are largely household based. This book is well suited for courses in Andean studies, economic anthropology, human ecology, peasants, and development.

One of the most important series of events in modern times--the restructuring of sex roles to adapt them to modern life--is here chronicled from the perspective of a lifetime of studying and writing about women. In this lively, lucid book Jessie Bernard examines, with concern and expertise, the dramatic changes in values experienced by women of all ages in all classes of society, and how these changes affect the options available to women today--as women, as wives, as mothers. Bernard begins her five-part examination with a critical overview of research on sex differences, pointing out the sexism that is implicit in most of this research and suggesting what kinds of research should be done. She discusses the paradox involved in preparing girls for the most demanding of all roles--motherhood--by fostering weakness in them rather than strength. She writes of the ages and stages of motherhood and the momentous changes now in process in the roles of wife and mother, as more women combine labor force participation with marriage and motherhood. Bernard contrasts the positions of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century feminist movements with respect to class, and reports on the influence of the feminist movement on working class and African-American women. The last part of the book tells of the bitter fruits of extreme sex role specialization, both for women and for society, and examines policy-relevant research on motherhood. Bernard explores the many new potentialities open to women, and, finally, the societal forms that will be necessary in order for women to plan their lives with wider latitude. Both the general reader and students of women's studies will be delighted and informed by Jessie Bernard's enlightening report on where women have been and where they are going in American society.

Although European policy initiatives to advance the position of women in Academia (and especially in science) have proliferated, both at national and EU levels, serious inequities of many kinds remain. This situation is exposed and investigated in this outstanding book, which presents reports and discussions from a two-day conference held at the Law Faculty of Lund University in December 2004. The participants and– law professors and social scientists and– present detailed reports on domestic experiences and regulations in eight European countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Among the many provocative issues raised and explored are the following: and• and“positive actionand” in theory and practice and• the progress of the EU Commission's strategy to integrate equal opportunity into all Community policies and activities and• the motives for promoting women in Academia and• the importance not only of setting targets but of funding to achieve them and• the extensive group of part-timers and fixed-term employees at the margin of the traditional academic career and• the importance of creating a situation in Academia where and“woman excellenceand” shows and• the development of and“marketableand” research disciplines embodied in private research institutes With its penetrating analysis of its subjectand– women in Academia in Europeand– and its many keen insights into the possibilities within Community equality law to move forward quickly and effectively toward equity in academic positions for women and men, Women in Academia and Equality Law will be read avidly and put to use by committed lawyers, academics, and policymakers throughout the EU countries.

Like the history of women, dance has been difficult to capture as a historical subject. Yet in bringing together these two areas of study, the nine internationally renowned scholars in this volume shed new and surprising light on women’s roles as performers of dance, choreographers, shapers of aesthetic trends, and patrons of dance in Italy, France, England, and Germany before 1800. Through dance, women asserted power in spheres largely dominated by men: the court, the theater, and the church. As women’s dance worlds intersected with men’s, their lives and visions were supported or opposed, creating a complex politics of creative, spiritual, and political expression. From a women’s religious order in the thirteenth-century Low Countries that used dance as a spiritual rite of passage to the salon culture of eighteenth-century France where dance became an integral part of women’s cultural influence, the writers in this volume explore the meaning of these women’s stories, performances, and dancing bodies, demonstrating that dance is truly a field across which women have moved with finesse and power for many centuries past.

Interpretation of female initiation rites among Christian women in contemporary urban Zambia. These rites are examined in the context of socio-economic changes. The emphasis is on ethnographic data gathered in the field.