"This book in its diversity of topics reflects the re-emergence of concern with women's issues in the last decade and the vigor and pioneering quality of scholarship in the area. Such extensive, albeit uneven, development says something about the state of our society as well, for organized scholarship is a form of problem solving, part of the process of working through issues that come to the attention of observers of and commentators on the social world. Be we can go further. By recognizing that the contemporary women's movement is not new, but is in keeping with a stream of feminism at least 150 years old, we can encourage the current rekindling of interest and consciousness to reflect contemporary events as well." -- xiii (foreword).