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This article is based upon empirical research with 45 cooperative and collective workers, 30 women and 15 men, undertaken in the United Kingdom between 1989 and 1993. It addresses both the constraints and the opportunities that workers experience in such organizations, and how both of these are informed by the gender of workers and the gender composition of the organization. Two lines of argument around which to theorize workers' experiences are presented; first, it is suggested that workers in cooperative and collective organizations have failed to overcome some of the material and discursive constraints that locate women and men in different positions in workplace organizations and in the labour market generally. Second, it is argued that gender inequalities are resisted and challenged by workers in cooperative and collective organizations in ways which allow for a different reading of their experiences, albeit one that is still informed by gender. The article argues that these gender inequalities, and the strategies adopted by workers to overcome them, operate at both the material and the discursive level. It concludes that there is support for both of the two apparently contrasting lines of argument, and that rather than viewing sociostructural and agency- orientated approaches to gender and work in opposition, it is possible to elucidate the ways in which they can be seen as elaborations or developments of one another.

Drawing upon analysis of policy documents and interviews with key policy makers and professionals co-ordinating Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) in various settings, this paper interrogates the socio-political drivers underpinning SRE policy and practice with reference to the contemporary Welsh context. In media output in the UK context and beyond, there have been widespread public concerns about the over-sexualization of young girls, sexual grooming and the increasing commercialization of sex. These issues are also significant in Wales, but a different socio-political culture has led to different public pronouncements and a distinctive SRE approach. In this paper, we outline relatively new Welsh Assembly Government guidance on SRE (March 2010) in the context of a devolved education system. We argue that the characteristics of the Welsh approach to SRE include an emphasis on children's rights and citizenship values, together with efforts to make SRE delivery more multidisciplinary and integrated. We also identify a different political rhetoric around sexual morality and family values, compared with that of England. This more progressive approach to SRE policy making, implementation and delivery in Wales is contrasted with the more heated pronouncements on the subject emanating from Westminster, particularly in recent years.

FOR THOSE OF US who have been following how lone parents are represented in media and political debates over the last few years, the shift was all too apparent. By Spring 1997, the political scapegoating of single mothers as being responsible for tearing apart the moral fabric of society had become less frequent; tabloid headlines which screamed 'family breakdown', 'scroungers' and 'welfare benefit crisis' appeared less often; and many politicians had started to project themselves as, at the least, concerned about the welfare of lone parents and their children. Surprising really, that is, until we remember the backdrop—the UK General Election and 1.3 million UK lone parent voters. By April 1997, a growing backlash against the more extreme and pathologising accusations against single mothers had rendered explicit vilification unacceptable. To pull votes a different sort of language had to come into play—one which didn't risk turning off the electorate but would still allow a freezing or cutting of welfare spending on lone parent families. Since it was now politically inexpedient to engage in vitriolic attack, there emerged a new discourse—one which reappropriated and redefined lone parents as chief targets of government aid. Close scrutiny of the texts circulating from 1992 to the time of the General Election offers insights of how policy agendas, political rhetoric and news interweave to construct a definition of lone parents which bears little resemblance to how they may see themselves.