Maryse Gaudier, Women in the 1980-95 Period: Constraints and Opportunities, Geneva: Institut international d'etudes sociales, Série bibliographique no. 18, 1997, 22.50 Swiss francs, xvii1196 pp.

Teresa Rees, Mainstreaming Equality in the European Union: Education, Training and Labour Market Policies, London: Routledge, 1998, £45.00, paper £14.99, xix1260 pp.

Jill Rubery, Mark Smith, Colette Fagan and Damian Grimshaw, Women and European Employment, London: Routledge, 1998, £50.00, xvii1351 pp.

Each of these books examines the situation of women from a different perspective and asks different questions. Gaudier is primarily concerned with what women themselves are doing and writing; Rees has made a detailed examination of policy making on education and training at the EU level; Rubery et al. are concerned with every aspect of women's position in European labour markets. All are studies which go beyond individual nation states, taking either an international or a European perspective. All are also in some sense reference books as well as texts in that they have useful discreet sections of information or analysis which can be easily accessed. They deal predominantly with the period 1980-1995 and taken together provide some important insights into the complex and contradictory processes which create ‘women's situation’ in the nineties.

This article takes a concern with gender as the starting point for looking at some of the political processes and structures that have grown up within the European Community. Such an approach reveals new contours to the EC system and throws a fresh light on features hitherto regarded as ‘normal’. Though the focus is on the EC, it is argued that the results of an analysis of this kind have a wider significance. Thus the article is intended as a contribution to the growing engagement between ‘women's politics’ in its broadest sense and the theory and practice of international relations.

It is comparatively rare for academics to get together to discuss problems connected with teaching. A lively discussion however developed out of an ad hoc meeting at the 1978 BISA conference on the teaching of courses which could be loosely subsumed under the title of ‘International Organization’ (IO). The discussion made clear that this area of International Relations teaching is in a state of flux, and that considerable uncertainty exists both about what to teach and how to teach it. Many ideas and suggestions emerged at the meeting and the exchange of views was clearly useful.

This conference was sponsored by the British Anti-Apartheid Movement (founded in 1960 after the Sharpeville massacre) and the convenor was Ronald Segal, now editor of the Penguin African Library. What was intended initially as a small expert conference snowballed suddenly, and in the end 30 official government delegations (mainly from African, Asian, and socialist countries) and over 200 delegates attended. The conference chairman was Mongi Slim, the Foreign Minister of Tunisia, and others present included Diallo Telli, the chairman of the U.N. Special Committee on Apartheid, Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien, the vice-chancellor of the University of Ghana, and Tom Mboya and Mainza Chona, the Ministers ofJustice of Kenya and Northern Rhodesia.

Before 1960 there was little general interest in the Belgian Congo, and the published material available on any aspect of its development was extremely limited. The accession of the Congo to independence in July 1960 and the prolonged crisis which followed has, however, completely altered this situation, and in the last three years more books and articles have been published on the Congo than on any other country in Africa. The purpose of this article is to list and evaluate at least some of this material and to suggest the main sources which exist for a study of the various aspects of the Congo crisis.