Maryse Gaudier, Women in the 1980-95 Period: Constraints and Opportunities, Geneva: Institut international d'etudes sociales, Série bibliographique no. 18, 1997, 22.50 Swiss francs, xvii1196 pp.

Teresa Rees, Mainstreaming Equality in the European Union: Education, Training and Labour Market Policies, London: Routledge, 1998, £45.00, paper £14.99, xix1260 pp.

Jill Rubery, Mark Smith, Colette Fagan and Damian Grimshaw, Women and European Employment, London: Routledge, 1998, £50.00, xvii1351 pp.

Each of these books examines the situation of women from a different perspective and asks different questions. Gaudier is primarily concerned with what women themselves are doing and writing; Rees has made a detailed examination of policy making on education and training at the EU level; Rubery et al. are concerned with every aspect of women's position in European labour markets. All are studies which go beyond individual nation states, taking either an international or a European perspective. All are also in some sense reference books as well as texts in that they have useful discreet sections of information or analysis which can be easily accessed. They deal predominantly with the period 1980-1995 and taken together provide some important insights into the complex and contradictory processes which create ‘women's situation’ in the nineties.