This book, Policy for a change: local labour market analysis and gender equality, is about the position of women in the labour market; as such, it forms part of a now large body of literature on this important topic. As readers will find, however, it makes a very distinctive contribution, and fills an important gap, because it addresses two critically important but frequently neglected dimensions of women's labour market situation. First, it contextualises women's position – in relation to accessing employment, developing a career or work record and fitting work into ‘the rest of life’ – in the broader public policy context that shapes their experiences; and second, it explores evidence about women in all their diversity at the local level, considering how, in 12 different parts of England, the structure of local labour market opportunities, as well as the practices of employers and managers and the available local infrastructure, shapes women's working lives.

As will become clear, this approach highlights a range of problems that analyses focused on a narrower definition of policy relevant to employment and the labour market do not address. It also firmly underscores some of the dangers of relying on statistical analysis at national or regional level, which can hide more than it reveals, and may give rise to inappropriate policy responses. The book also differs from most other edited collections in that it draws on both a substantial body of statistical work and on a set of new, multi-method and multi-disciplinary studies. These fully integrated investigations, conceptualised from the outset as a coherent programme of research, were developed and carried out by the research team to which all authors of the contributions included in this book belonged. The individual results of these investigations are available as a series of gender profiles, synthesis reports and locality reports (outlined in the ‘About the GELLM research programme’ section in the book), made available in 2004–06 to the programme's partner agencies in the 12 English local authorities that co-funded the GELLM research programme. They have already been used by those agencies to inform and guide local-level policy developments and to raise awareness of specific local issues affecting women.

This opening chapter sets the scene for the later contributions to the book, which is divided into two main parts.