Sheila Rowbotham is a Writer in Residence in the Eccles Centre for American Studies in the British Library and an Honorary fellow at the Universities of Manchester and Bristol. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society. She helped to found the Women's Liberation Movement in the early 1970s and has written many books on women's and labour history. These include A Century of Women; Promise of a Dream: Remembering the Sixties and Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love which was awarded the Lambda Literary Prize for Gay Biography in the US and short listed for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Her poems and two plays have also been published. Her most recent work, Dreamers of a New Day: Women who Invented the Twentieth Century, describes American and British women's ideas and plans for changing daily life from the 1880s to the 1920s and was published in 2010.

First published in 1992, this book is an historical introduction to a wide range of women's movements from the late eighteenth-century to the date of its publication. It describes economic, social and political ideas which have inspired women to organize, not only in Europe and North America, but also in the Third World.

Foreword; Series Editor's Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; General Introduction; 1. What Do Women Want? 2. Women, Power, and Politics Part I: Rights, Sovereignty, and Emancipation 3. The Tocsin of Reason: Women in the French Revolution 4. A New Moral World: Early Radicals, Cooperators, and Socialists 5. The Abolition of Slavery and Women's Emancipation 6. Class and Community: women and the Chartist Movement 7. Women in Revolution: The Nineteenth-Century France 8. Equality and Individualism: Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill Part II: Changing Personal Life 9. Sensuous Spirits: Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin 10. Transforming Domestic Life: Cooperatives and the State 11. Moral Uplift, Social Purity, and Temperance Part III: Political Movements and Social Action 12. Nationalist Movements and Women's Place 13. Social Reform: protection by The State 14. Welfare and Social Action 15. Socialism, Women, and the New Life 16. Marxists and the Woman Question 17. Anarchism and Rebel Women Part IV: Political Power: Reform and Revolution 18. The Suffrage: Patriots and Internationalists 19. Women and Revolution in Russia 20. Indian Women and Self-Rule 21. The Long March of Chinese Women Part V: Identity and Difference 22. Sexual Politics 23. Battles around Boundaries: Conflicting Strategies after World War I Part VI: Recent Women's Movements and Social Protest 24. "Borings" and Beginnings: Origins of Women's Liberation in Many Countries 25. Personal Politics: Changing Definitions Through Action 26. Knots: Theoretical Debates 27. The Protests Without a name: Women in collective Action; Conclusion; Notes; Further Reading; Index