* What does globalization mean for education and training policy?

* What does it mean for women, particularly women of the working classes?

In this wide ranging book, Jacky Brine shows that global changes are gendered, racialized and classed. Rejecting a deterministic reading, the book explores the many conflicting and collaborative interests and the possibilities for opportunity and change as well as resistance: from the regionalized and national state, to training providers, femocrats and feminist educators, and unemployed working class women.

Education and training policy is a key feature of regionalized blocs. The book explores its gendered relationship to social policy and the social exclusion that results from the unequal material and social effects of economic growth - particularly the pathologization of unemployed women. Despite the growth of post-compulsory education and training, the relative and actual position of under-educated working class women changes little. Key to the discussion is the discourse of equality which, contrary to expectations, is seen to marginalize rather than increase women's opportunities.