1st Edition

Women Workers and Gender Identities, 1835-1913 The Cotton and Metal Industries in England

By Carol E. Morgan Copyright 2001
    236 Pages
    by Routledge

    240 Pages
    by Routledge

    Women Workers and Gender Identities, 1835 - 1913 examines the experiences of women workers in the cotton and small metals industries and the discourses surrounding their labour. It demonstrates how ideas of womanhood often clashed with the harsh realities of working-class life that forced women into such unfeminine trades as chain-making and brass polishing. Thus discourses constructing women as wives and mothers, or associating women's work with distinctly feminine attributes, were often undercut and subverted.

    Chapter 1 Introductory essay – gender in labor history; Part I Negotiating gender difference in the cotton district; Chapter 2 Cooperation, conflict, and community; Chapter 3 Shaping women’s identities; Part II Female labor and gender difference in the small metal industries; Chapter 4 Gender at work; Chapter 5 Gender divisions and class relations; Chapter 6 Gender, class, and community in the Black Country; Chapter 7 Negotiating gender difference in the small metal industries; Conclusion;

    Biography

    Morgan, Carol E.

    'Morgan is to be congratulated on producing such a coherent and sophisticated analysis from the daunting array of data and theoretical perspectives on offer. The lucid presentation disguises an immensely complicated narrative, and the brevity if the text belies an impressive breadth and depth of knowledge.' - Katrina Honeyman, Northern History, September 2002