Elisabetta Ruspini has a PhD in Sociology and Social Research and is a Lecturer in Social Research at the University of Milano-Bicocca (Milan, Italy). She has extensive research experience in gender issues, lone motherhood, social and family policies, the gender dimension of poverty, and the relationship between poverty and health for women. Angela Dale is Professor of Quantitative Social Research at the University of Manchester and Director of the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research.

"With all the data and insight that is crammed into this surprisingly slim volume, I am sure it will become a staple feature on many a student social scientists' reading list for years to come." SRA News

• Contents: Part I: Introduction; Introduction ~ Elisabetta Ruspini and Angela Dale; Women and social change ~ Elisabetta Ruspini; Survey designs for longitudinal research ~ Elisabetta Ruspini; Part II: The issues; The role of education on postponement of maternity in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden ~ Siv Gustafsson, Eiko Kenjoh and Cécile Wetzels; The financial consequences of relationship dissolution for women in Western Europe ~ Caroline Dewilde; Women's incomes over a snythetic lifetime ~ Heather Joshi and Hugh Davies; Fixed-term contracts and unemployment at the beginning of the employment career in Germany: does gender matter? ~ Karin Kurz; Women and self-employment: the case of television production workers in Britain ~ Shirley Dex and Colin Smith; Gender wage differentials in Britain and Japan ~ Yayoi Sugihashi and Angela Dale; Longitudinal analysis and the constitution of the concept of gender ~ Jane Elliott; Part III: Data sources; Concluding comments ~ Elisabetta Ruspini and Angela Dale; Appendix: Description and characteristics of longitudinal data sets used in the book ~ Elisabetta Ruspini.