The first sourcebook on women in Europe, The European Women's Almanac is a handy and easy-to-use compilation of information on women's rights and status and how they live in a continent that stretches from Iceland in the north to Malta in the south, from Portugal in the west to Bulgaria in the east.
A central aim of this essential guide is to present not the promises of where women ought to be but the facts of where they are. How do women in twenty-six countries fare in education and employment? What are their legal rights? What health care are they offered?
Arranged alphabetically by country, each section of the almanac includes an introductory "snapshot" of the country, with such general statistics as area and population density. Then, fascinating and detailed statistics on women are presented:
The Scandinavian countries have a higher percentage of women in their national parliaments than other European countries. Finland is first with 38.5 percent. The United Kingdom ranks twenty-first out of twenty-six with 6.3 percent.
The country with the highest death rate from cancer of the cervix is Romania, followed by Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the former East Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom.
Before German unification in 1989, 90 percent of women with children in East Germany were employed. In West Germany in 1988 the figure was 38 percent.
For each country The European Women's Almanac provides addresses readers can write to obtain further information, and letters from individual women to add an essential element: the voice of personal experience. The volume concludes with tables that compare how all the countries included measure up on population, health, and lifestyle trends.
