Men or Women: Who are the Victims? (Civil Society S.) - Softcover

Pizzey, Erin; Shackleton, J. R.; Urwin, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1903386098 ISBN 13: 9781903386095

Publisher: Civitas:Institute for the Study of Civil Society, 2000

Synopsis

Throughout history there have always been groups seeking to turn the powers of government to their own advantage. Today, one frequently employed strategy is to claim victim status for members of a group, and then insist on "rights" to be guaranteed by the state. However these "rights" are better understood as legally sanctioned privileges which have more in common with the preferments awarded by pre-democracy monarchs to their favourites. The contributors to this book ask if women are really "victims" of a male conspiracy in the workplace and the home, as some feminist critics have claimed. Shackleton and Urwin argue that difference in average earnings between men and women may be attributable to other factors, such as marital status, and that, in some important ways, the labour market today is much tougher for men than it is for women. Erin Pizzey, the founder of the first refuge for women and children who were victims of domestic violence, describes the way in which her standing in the international feminist movement declined when she began to point out that men, as well as women, can be victims of such violence. These essays demonstrate that the group animosity encouraged by the new "victicrats" can never be consistent with an equitable social order. "Single women earn as much as similarly qualified single men, according to research that questions many of the assumptions behind alleged sex inequality at work." The Daily Telegraph

About this title

Review:

"Single women earn as much as similarly qualified single men, according to research that questions many of the assumptions behind alleged sex inequality at work." -- The Daily Telegraph

About the Author:

Erin Pizzey founded the first refuge for battered women and children in Chiswick in 1971. The importance of her work was immediately recognised and she became the founder of an international movement to provide shelter for victims of domestic violence. She has received numerous awards in recognition of her pioneering work. Her book Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear (1974) was the first book to deal with domestic violence. Her subsequent career as an author has embraced fiction, in the form of novels, short stories, poetry and plays, as well as books on domestic violence and a volume of early autobiography, Infernal Child. She has written and lectured widely on domestic violence, having completed two world-wide lecture tours, as well as testifying before the Attorney General's Task Force on Family Violence in Texas in 1984. Television programmes have included 'Sanctuary' in Channel 4's Cutting Edge series, and 'Who's Failing the Family?' in BBC2's Counterblast series in 1999.

J.R. Shackleton is Professor of Economics and Head of Westminster Business School. Educated at King's College Cambridge and the School of Oriental and African Studies, he previously lectured at Queen Mary College and was an economic adviser at the Department of Social Security. He has an extensive academic publications record and has written for think-tanks such as the Employment Policy Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute. He has frequently appeared on radio and television.

Peter Urwin is principal lecturer in economics at the University of Westminster. He has written on a variety of labour-market subjects, including discrimination, atypical employment, unemployment and the London labour market. He is a member of the University's Education, Training and the Labour Market Research Group and Director of the WBS Graduate Summer School. In his work with the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry he has helped to establish the London Labour Market Briefings. He is at present working on a number of projects including an analysis of the first employment destinations of Westminster students, an analysis of the incidence of training and education amongst older workers and a paper on over-education in the UK. He has taught on a wide range of courses in the fields of economics, business and management, with a present focus on the area of quantitative methods.

About this edition

• Publisher: Civitas:Institute for the Study of Civil Society
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1903386098
• ISBN 13: 9781903386095
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 54