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Despite the growing amount of literature on women′s career life histories and individual career paths, analysis of the different and changing organizational contexts in which women pursue their careers is sparse. Uses an in‐depth case study of Public Sector Utility to examine how the restructuring of a public sector bureaucracy over a five‐year period affected the careers of women managers. Finds that although restructuring at PSU has opened up opportunities for women through an increase in the number of managerial jobs and through changes in the objective requirements of managerial work, a number of factors operated to keep glass ceilings in place: the concentration of women in the “velvet ghetto” of human resources, or their isolation in the cul‐de‐sac of other professional specialisms; the increased significance of informal organizational processes and networks as a means to career progress in a time of uncertainty; poor line manager support for access to work‐related career development opportunities such as special development projects and task force memberships; and generic corporate‐wide equal opportunity policies and processes which emphasize formal procedure and practice, and which have become marginal to core business concerns and the rest of human resource policy.

Challenges the assumption implicit in much of the literature on women managers that their failure to progress can be explained solely in terms of the individual behaviour of women and their employers. Examines the characteristics of organizations in which women make their careers which are potent factors impeding female advancement. Draws attention to the effects of radical organizational change, and explores some of the consequences of this change for women managers through the in‐depth analysis of a “typical” case. Explores the complex process by which restructuring and managerial policy and practice eventually combined to undermine the organization’s stated intent to expand significantly the number of women in management. Suggests that in‐depth analysis over time is required to understand the complex processes of change and its often unanticipated consequences for management careers.

Race and ethnicity continue to divide us. Accurate data on those divisions, their effects, and their causes are vital to understanding them and, where it is possible and desired, healing them. The articles by Clyde Tucker and Brian Kojetin and by Ruth McKay and Manuel de la Puente describe the joint BLS‐Census efforts to develop questions on these issues for the Current Population Survey that will increase the accuracy of the counts and reduce negative emotional responses to the survey itself.

This register of current research in social economics has been compiled by the International Institute of Social Economics. The register does not claim to be comprehensive but is merely an aid for research workers and institutions interested in social economics. The register will be updated and made more comprehensive in the future but this is largely dependent on the inflow of information from researchers in social economics. In order to facilitate this process a standardised form is to be found on the last page of this register. Completed forms, with attached sheets as necessary, should be returned to the compiler: Dr Barrie O. Pettman, Director, International Institute of Social Economics, Enholmes Hall, Patrington, Hull, N. Humberside, England, HU12 OPR. Any other comments on the register will also be welcome.

This chapter discusses the extension of legal equality between male and female citizens in four states in North Africa – Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria – through one specific lens: A married woman's legal capacity to initiate and obtain divorce without the husband's consent. Building on the works of Stein Rokkan and Reinhard Bendix on the expansion of citizenship to the ‘lower classes’, it is argued that amendments in divorce law by introducing in-court divorce for women, in addition to out-of-court divorce, is a significant institutional change that extends legal equality between men and women. The introduction of in-court divorce expands female citizenship by bolstering woman's juridical autonomy and capacity in state law. Changes in divorce laws are thus part of state centralization by means of standardizing rules that regulate family law through public administrative institutions rather than religious organizations. Two questions are addressed: First, how did amendments in divorce laws occur after independence? Second, in which ways did women's bolstered legal capacity in divorce have a spill over effect on reforms in other patriarchal state laws? Based on observations on sequences of change in four states in North Africa, it is argued that amendments that equalize between men and women in divorce should be seen as a key driver for reforms in other state laws, that reduce legal inequality between male and female citizens. In all four states, women's citizenship was extended in nationality law and criminal law after amendments in divorce law gave women unilateral legal power to exit a marital relationship.