Why is it that, even in multi-nationals with exceptionally enlightened gender and family policies, so few women reach top management positions? This is a notably well researched and well analysed study of the phenomenon and its causes, which goes behind popular cliché-ridden explanations. The perspective taken is explicitly feminist, and explicitly political in that it focuses on power relationships.

Those interested in gender issues in management will find this book indispensable. It is 'academic' in presentation, with detailed references and careful linking to other findings in its field. However, unlike too many 'academic' books, it is well written and relatively easy to read.

Perhaps its main virtue is the breadth with which the subject is approached. It examines in depth not only the gender bias of the implicit labour contract - and management contract - within organisations but also the underlying assumptions about personal and family life that help to account for the fact that few women enter top management and few of those have children. The research method makes evident the wide gap between rhetoric and reality and also demonstrates the way in which both language and the very basis of business organisation (even modern 'delayered' organisation) exert a subtle bias against the entry of women to the top ranks of management.

Even those who do not have a specific interest in gender issues will find a great deal to reflect on about the nature of business and society and the relationship between them.

The book also provides valuable material for anyone who wants to get into real depth on the place of business in a society that truly seeks to meet its human and not merely its economic potential. What are the societal 'ground rules' within which that could be achieved and how might they be brought into existence?

The author does not, in general, seek to prescribe. The book is a work of description and analysis, although we are left with a tantalising last sentence. 'For women and men, opportunities for realizing alternative visions are overshadowed by the continued primacy of paid work as the source of status and meaning in contemporary culture.' That strikes a particular chord with me, having recently read a collection of the stories of people - women and men - who are striving as their main goal to balance the demands of career, family and community. The sheer invisibility of work that is not paid recurs as a leitmotif throughout those stories, together with the powerful demonstration that it is precisely this invisible work that is central to the continuance of a healthy community and society.