This is a significant and absorbing book, reporting on an important research programme about women's position in the labour market in England. It provides much-needed data and analysis about why many women, particularly those living in the most disadvantaged areas, continue to face difficulties in participation and progression within the labour market.

Yeandle and her research team undertook a detailed study of local labour markets across 12 different parts of England, using a multi-methods and multi-disciplinary approach. The result is a very readable and useful book that highlights not only the disadvantage faced by women, especially disadvantaged women, in their local labour markets, but also how policy exacerbates that disadvantage.

The first part of Policy for Change introduces the reader to the main concepts and debates around women and employment and would be a helpful introduction for students coming to the study of the gendered nature of labour markets. This includes an exploration of some of the ‘myths, puzzles and problems’ surrounding women's participation in the labour force. Part II of the book focuses on the research evidence from their research study.

Much of what the study found will not be new to those who work with women in disadvantaged areas, but what is new is the balance of detailed statistical and qualitative data that focuses, not on women's individual attributes and attitudes, but on the very real obstacles to paid employment faced by women who have children or other caring responsibilities – particularly if they are at the lower end of the labour market.

The myth that work is the best ‘route out of poverty’, that ‘work pays’ especially when combined with tax credits, is challenged using data that show this view is ‘gender blind’, that it ignores the reality of most women's lives. The low-paid, low-quality, often short-term nature of many jobs on offer in local areas, combined with the expense and difficulties of finding suitable childcare is just part of that reality. Traveling time also loomed large as a consideration, especially for those with caring responsibilities – and women living in deprived areas are more likely to have caring responsibilities. The poor quality of the part-time jobs available, combined with managers resistance to part-time working in jobs at senior levels and to advancement within workplaces for part-time workers, resulted in the study finding that more than half of women in low-paid part-time jobs were ‘working below potential’, not using their skills, experience or qualifications.

Insecurity within local labour markets, particularly for those with children or other caring responsibilities, who have to make often complicated arrangements to allow them to work, has been shown to influence potential workers’ approaches to employment (Charles and James, Reference Charles and James2003). The length of time it can take to process a new claim for benefits was raised as an issue by women in the study; Adelman et al. (Reference Adelman, Middleton and Ashworth2003) have shown that families can be plunged into severe poverty during such transitions between work and benefits. When the range of factors raised in this study is combined, it can make clear economic sense for a woman, especially if she is a lone parent, not to take up paid employment.

The book does not deal only with women in low-paid jobs. One part of the study looked at the experiences of highly qualified women in the local authority sector, which is seen as being at the forefront of family-friendly and equal opportunities’ policies. It is also a significant employer of women. However, despite some of the local authorities having women-only management training and mentoring schemes for women managers, women remain clustered at the lower end of the occupational structures within local government. Indeed, although women make up 70% of local government employees, they comprise only about a third of its top 5% of earners and even in areas that are described as feminised, men continue to dominate senior management.

The study found that Hakim's preference theory (Hakim, Reference Hakim2002, Reference Hakim and Houston2005) fails to take into account the manner in which the research participants changed their orientation to work, depending on developments in their personal circumstances, on the organisational structures of which they were part and on their life course. Many of the women in senior and executive roles had accepted the need to work full time, and longer hours, to cope with increasing work pressures and work spilling over into their home lives. They struggled to sustain caring and work roles in an organisational culture where, they felt, there was an unwritten rule that working flexibly or from home was not acceptable at the higher levels.

A modification of Hakim's categorisation of women's work−lifestyle preferences is proposed to include ‘women in contention’ – those women who face career options that would require them to sacrifice their family and personal lives. This attempt to squeeze women workers into work−lifestyle preference categories seems to this reviewer to go against the empirical evidence presented in the book, which indicates that it is structural obstacles that constrain women's employment and career opportunities.

But this is a minor quibble about a valuable book that confirms, using a range of compelling data, that improving the participation of women in employment demands approaches that appreciate the differences between men and women – in particular women's caring roles – and also the differences between women of different ages and ethnicities.