Women and Gender in Postwar Europe charts the experiences of women across Europe from 1945 to the present day. Europe at the end of World War II was a sorry testimony to the human condition; awash in corpses, the infrastructure devastated, food and fuel in such short supply. From Soviet Union to the United Kingdom and Ireland the vast majority of citizens on whom survival depended, in the postwar years, were women. This book charts the involvement of women in postwar reconstruction through the Cold War and post Cold-War years with chapters on the economic, social, and political dynamism that characterized Europe from the 1950s onwards, and goes on to look at the woman's place in a rebuilt Europe that was both more prosperous and as tension-filled as before.

This will be an essential resource for students of women and gender studies and for post 1945 courses.

Notes on Contributors. Preface. Introduction: Historical Overview Bonnie G. Smith 1. Battling for Peace: The Transformation of the Women's Movement in Cold War Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe Melissa Feinberg 2. 'Democracy Could Go No Further': European Women in the Early United Nations Jan Lambertz 3. Women and Social Work in Central and Eastern Europe Darja Zavirsek 4. Psychoanalysts on the Radio: Domestic Citizenship and Motherhood in Postwar Britain Michal Shapira 5. The 'Motor of Modern Life': Women's Work in Europe West and East since 1945 Francisca de Haan 6. 'What's new' and is it good for you? Gender and Consumerism in Postwar Europe M. Jane Slaughter 7. Happy Motherhood and Lesbian Spaces: Women's Initiatives and Sexuality in Postwar Europe Cynthia Kreisel 8. Political Participation, Civil Society, and Gender: Lessons from the Cold War? Belinda Davis 9. Gender, Race and Utopias of Development Young-Sun Hong 10. Gender and Reframing of the First World War in Serbia during 1980s and 1990s Melissa Bokovoy 11. Post-Soviet Masculinities, Shame and the Archives of Social Suffering in Contemporary Lithuania Arturas Tereskinas 12. Post-1989 Women's Activism in Poland Joanna Regulska and Magda Grabowska. Conclusion: Joanna Regulska

Joanna Regulska is a Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Geography and the Dean of International Programs, School for Arts and Sciences at Rutgers. Her publications include Women and Citizenship in Central and East Europe with Jasmina Lukic and Darja Zavirsek, (2006) and Cooperation or Conflict: State, the European Union and Women with M. Grabowska, M. Fuszara and J. Mizielinska (2008).

Bonnie G. Smith is Board of Governors Professor of History at Rutgers University. Her publications indclude The Gender of History: Men, Women and Historical Practice (1998); Imperialism (2000); Europe in the Contemporary World (2005); and co-author of The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures (1994, 2001, 2005, 2009) and of Crossroads and Cultures: A History of the World (forthcoming, 2011). She has edited Global Feminisms since 1945 (2000) and Women's and Gender History in Global Perspective (3 vols., 2004-5).