Cynthia Cockburn is a researcher and writer in the sociology of work and gender at The City University, London. She studied at the London College of printing and is a member of the National Union of Journalists. She is author of The Local State and Machinery of Dominance (Pluto 1977 and 1985) and Two-Track Training and In the Way of Women: Men's Resistance to Sex Equality in Organizations (1987 and 1991).

'Cockburn has managed that most difficult of tasks: to produce a book on an important social issue which is theoretically interesteing, factually informative and well written'