Preface Roadblocks to Equality is a unique edited collection which brings together a range of original scholarship devoted to central topics and issues of importance to women and women's lives within contemporary society, including globalization and the sex industry, political economy, women in higher education, and violence against women. The book is divided into four main sections: Women and Political Economy; Women and the Culture Industry; Women, Violence and Human Rights; and Politics, Knowledge and Age. Women and Political Economy features essays on the separation of the public economy and privatized care work, the political economy of women's everyday lives; the importance of universal, affordable childcare in light of women's often low-wage, service-sector employment is also explored here. Women and the Culture Industry includes chapters that reflect upon how women are represented in advertising, and considers how women have responded to those perceptions and representations to advocate change. This section also features chapters devoted to women and global communications and the issue of pornography and the question of men's responsibility. Women, Violence and Human Rights features chapters on globalization and the sex industry, the state of women's rights and human rights internationally, the Montreal Massacre, and women's experiences of separation/divorce sexual assault in rural Ohio. Politics, Knowledge and Age leads off with a chapter that explores ways in which aging is a gendered experience and examines why aging and women's activism matter. Women in higher education and girlhood studies are also considered within chapters featured in this section of the book.

My original vision was to create a book that would take up a range of issues, moving across various boundaries or borders, and one that would have international dimensions. The book includes contributions from scholars in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. This was by design, as with the other edited books I have done in the past, I strove to have contributors onboard from around the world. My original title for the project was Women Across Borders --I very much like the metaphor of moving across and through borders of various kinds--although the new title (suggested by the publisher) is one that I also embrace: it carries different connotations, but conveys the central essence of the essays within the book concerned to explore inequalities and boundaries of various kinds that women encounter within the contemporary social world. --Jeffery Klaehn, Kitchener, Ontario.