Jill Rubery is professor of comparative employment systems at Manchester Business School and Director of the European Work and Employment Research Centre (EWERC). She has many years experience of work in the field of equal opportunities and women's employment, on projects funded by the European Commission, the OECD, the ILO, the UK Equal Opportunities Commission, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions and the UK Economic and Social Research Council. Her research has covered in particular equal pay, atypical employment, working time, gender segregation, welfare state systems, gender mainstreaming and the economics of equal opportunities. During the third action programme for equal opportunities for women and men in the European Community (1991-1995), Jill Rubery was the co-ordinator of the EC network of experts on the situation of women in the labour market and was the UK member of the EC gender and employment expert group from 1996 to 1999.