This chapter sets the broader context for the book, which repeats a study on transition to first-time motherhood undertaken 21 years earlier. It asks what a new study on motherhood can tell us about how expectations and experiences are configured in harsher neoliberal conditions and digital landscapes that can empower and individually and experientially, undermine. In this first chapter, the context against which contemporary motherhood is experienced is compared to the earlier study. This chapter will also provide the theoretical and conceptual framework for the book through a focus on definitions and debates around motherhood and narrative construction, gender, and contextual, structural factors. The methodological details of the two qualitative longitudinal studies (which use the same research design) on transition to first-time motherhood are outlined in this chapter, setting the scene for the data presented in Chapters 2, 3 and 4. The chapter asks if it has ever been a more challenging time to be a woman who is also a mother.

We began Chapter 1 by emphasising the need to be aware of the different contexts within which corporations and corporate law are created and operate. We considered the historical and regulatory contexts of contemporary Australian corporate law. This chapter considers the importance of the different theoretical and ideological perspectives that assist in understanding the nature of the corporation, the role and purpose of corporations in contemporary society, and the rationales for and against the regulation of corporate activity.

“Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, Feminist Studies,” with the theme of the subordination of women, is marked by diverse and overlapping intellectual traditions and movements. We take a non-Western perspective of this diversity. We use the terms interchangeably, as in the historical development from the earlier focus on Women’s Studies and more recent shift to Gender Studies in the West as well as in third world Women’s Studies, these disciplines have a close relationship with Feminism and the Women’s Movement and have gained from each other.The chapter covers issues including the Women’s Movements, Women’s Studies/Feminism, the different waves of feminism, feminist perspectives, feminist research / feminist methods, objectivity for feminist research and feminist theories. We cover theory and method for social science in general, but there is a section that features psychology specifically and highlights the different strands of feminism.