Women Workers and Gender Identities, 1835-1913

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.

Morgan, Carol E.

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;