Gender Autonomy in Western Europe

Book excerpt: Rina Singh's book compares seventeen Western European countries in the area of women's involvement in the public sphere (participation and policies affecting it) and private sphere (roles and policies affecting it). The interaction between the two spheres is analysed to determine where countries lie in the process towards gender autonomy - ultimately the ability of each sex to make free lifestyle choices to participate in both or either the public and private spheres in a way that neither penalises nor rewards the choices in material and/or social terms. Four models of gender autonomy are proposed.