"This book is an excellent read and I have no doubt that it will become a standard text in the sociology of education. It represents the first attempt at explaining the closing gender gap (if not the emergence of a new one!) in terms of the wider social, political, cultural and economic changes in the 1980s and 1990s." Phillip Brown, ... Read moreSchool of Social and Administrative Studies, University of Wales, Cardiff "There are 3 main reasons why this book is worth reading many times and from different perspectives. The first is that it brings together the long-term scholarship of three of England's leading feminist scholars in education. The second is that it is an important knowledge-based intervention in an educational debate which has claimed a high profile in media and education policy circles over the 1990s and into the 2000s. The third reason is that the book's lines of argument are conceptually and empircally rich and its conclusions provocative." British Educational Research Journal Show Less