Gender, work and labour history: A response to carol morgan

Women's History Review

Volumn 10, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 121-136

  Blackburn, Sheila ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34247734223     PISSN: 09612025     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09612020100200272     Document Type: Article

References (45)

1. Carol Morgan (1997) Gender Constructions and Gender Relations in Cotton and Chain-making in England: a contested and varied terrain, Women's History Review, 6, pp. 367-89
2. For the work of Rose, see: Sonya O, Rose (1988) Gender Antagonism and Class Conflict: exclusionary strategies of male trade unionists in nineteenth century Britain, Social History, 13, pp. 191-208
3. Sonya O. Rose, (1992) Limited Livelihoods: gender and class-in nineteenth century England (Berkeley: University of California Press)
4. Morgan, 'Gender Constructions', p. 368
5. Edward Thompson (1963) The Making of the English Working Class, p. 205 (London: Gollancz)
6. Edward Thompson (1978) The Poverty of Theory: or an orrery of errors, in Edward Thompson The Poverty of Theory and other Essays, p. 357 (London: Merlin Press)
7. David Montgomery (1987) The Fall of the House of Labour: the state and labour activism, 1865-1925 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). For further comment on 'best practice' in labour history and the need to study the role of agency, see the work of Neville Kirk, especially (1994) Post-modernism and the Sublime Myth of the Backward March of Democracy in Nineteenth-century England, Labour History Review, 59, p. 77. For the considerable disagreement between postmodernists and others on how human agency should be regarded, see Charles Tilly (1994) Softcore Solipsism, Labour/Le Travail, 34, p. 261; Louise Tilly (1989) Gender, Women's History and Social History, Social Science History, 13, pp. 438-462; Patrick Joy
8. ce (1993) The Imaginary Discontents of Social History: a note of response, Social History, 38, p. 81
9. Eleanor Gordon (1991) Women and the Labour Movement in Scotland, 1850-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press)
10. Richard Whipp (1990) Patterns of Labour: work and social change in the pottery industry (London: Routledge). See also the valuable collection of essays in Angela John (Ed.) (1986) Unequal Opportunities: women's employment in England, 1880-1918 (Oxford: Blackwell)
11. Robert Gray (1996) The Factory Question and Industrial England, 1830-1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Significantly, Gray points out, although women participated in factory reform agitations, the leadership of the movement was dominated by men. Employers also sought to recoup the costs of legislation by increasing control over women in the workplace. See also: Robert Gray (1989) The Language of Factory Reform in Britain, c. 1830-1860, in Patrick Joyce (Ed.) The Historical Meaning of Work, pp. 143-179 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, first published 1987); Robert Gray (1993) Factory Legislation and the Gendering of Jobs in the North of England, 1830-1860, Gender and History, 5, pp. 56-80
12. Michael Savage (1987) The Dynamics of Working- Class Politics: the labour movement in Preston, 1880-1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Michael Savage (1988) Women and Work in the Lancashire Cotton Industry, 1890-1939, in J, A. Jowitt & A, J. Mclvor (Eds) Employers and Labour in the English Textile Industries, 1850-1939 (London: Routledge)
13. According to Kirk, 'by the early 1850s the majority of the employed Irish in south Lancashire and north-east Cheshire were cotton operatives'. See Neville Kirk (1985) The Growth of Working Class Reformism in Mid-Victorian England, p. 326 (London: Croom Helm); for ethnic and religious friction which led to sectarian rioting in Lancashire in the 1850s and 1860s, see ibid., pp. 317-24. For the persistence of ethnic identities in Lancashire coal and textile towns into the twentieth century, see Trevor Griffiths (1996) Work, Class and Community: social identities and political change in the Lancashire coalfield, 1910-39, in Alan Campbell, Nina Fishman & David Howell (Eds) Miners, Unions and Politics, 1910-47, pp. 213-218 (Aldershot: Scolar Press). However, for an American study of how female and male work patterns in Irish families led to supportive behaviour in strikes, see Carole Turbin (1992) Working Women of Collar city: gender, class and community in Troy, 1864-86 (Champaign
14. For example, Rose voices some of the reservations of Scott's critics when she states, 'symbolic analysis of texts in particular, wallows in relativism and ignores the material realities that profoundly affect people's lives' (Rose, Limited Livelihoods, p. 9). For the work of Scott, see Joan W. Scott (1988) Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press). For criticisms of Scott, see three responses in International Labor and Working-class History,vol. 31 (1987): Bryan D. Palmer, pp. 14-23; Christine Stansell, pp. 24-29; Anson Rabinbach, pp. 30-36. Hoff s comments on Scott's work are also significant; see Joan Hoff (1994) Gender as a Postmodern Category of Paralysis, Women's History Review, 3, pp. 149-168
15. Rose states that 'The complex processes of producing changes in economic realities are better pictured as a Gordian Knot', and that 'The portrait I have drawn resembles a spider's web of interacting forces' (Rose, Limited Livelihoods, pp. 10, 189)
16. Rose, Limited Livelihoods, p. 126
17. Sonya Rose (1993) Gender and Labour History: the nineteenth-century legacy, International Review of Social History, 38, Supplement 1, pp. 144-162. Kirk makes much the same point in Kirk, 'Post-modernism', p. 11, footnote 3
18. Sonya Rose (1998) Resuscitating Class, Social Science History, 22, p. 20
19. Whilst Rose criticises census data for underrepresenting the numbers of waged women workers, particularly married ones, she provides no alternative quantitative evidence (Rose, Limited Livelihoods, pp. 79-82). But many economic historians consider that women's work opportunities actually declined during the nineteenth century. The most recent research suggests that this trend occurred from the mid-century, and lasted until the first three decades of the twentieth century; see Jane Humphries (1995) Women and Paid Work, in June Purvis (Ed.) Women's History: Britain, 1850-1945, pp. 85-105 (London: UCL Press). Some historians have also argued that, given that women's work experience was largely limited to low-paid, unskilled work, it is not surprising that the majority placed waged labour second to the needs of their families; see Elizabeth Roberts (1984) A Woman's Place: an oral history of working-class women, 1890-1940 (Oxford: Blackwell); and Ellen Ross (1993) Love and T
20. oil: motherhood in outcast London, 1870-1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press). For the specific circumstances of sweated women workers in this context, see Sheila Blackburn (1997) No Necessary Connection with Homework: Gender and Sweated Labour, 1840-1909, Social History, 22, pp. 269-285
21. Marcel van der Linden (1993) Connecting Household and Labour History, International Review of Social History, 38, Supplement 1, pp. 163-173. Horrell and Humphries insist that only a systematic, empirical examination of household budgets, rather than grand theorisation, can shed light on male breadwinning patterns. Significantly, whilst Rose stresses that married women's employment became more important as children were withdrawn from the labour market, Horrell and Humphries tentatively suggest that when male family heads reached forty or over, children became responsible for large proportions of family budgets. See Rose, Limited Livelihoods, p. 77; Sara Horrell & Jane Humphries (1997) The Origins and Expansion of the Male Breadwinner Family: the case of nineteenth century Britain, International Review of Social History, 42, Supplement 5, pp. 25-64
22. Savage, The Dynamics of Working-Class Politics, p. 79
23. Whilst I share Pollert's reservations concerning patriarchal concepts, I feel that we cannot ignore work in this field. The scholarship of Bennett and Walby is particularly impressive. See Judith Bennett (1989) Feminism and History, Gender and History, 1, pp. 251-272
24. Judith Bennett (1993) Women's History: a study in continuity and change, Women's History Review, 2, pp. 173-184
25. Sylvia Walby (1990) Theorizing Patriarchy (Oxford: Blackwell)
26. For Pollert's comments, see Anna Pollert (1996) Gender and Class Revisited, or the Poverty of 'Patriarchy', Sociology, 30, pp. 639-59
27. Sheila Blackburn (1983) Sweated Labour and the Minimum Wage: a case study of the women chain-makers of Cradley Heath, South Staffordshire, 1850-1950, University of London, unpublished PhD thesis
28. Sheila Blackburn (1987) Employers and Social Policy: Black Country chain-masters, the minimum wage campaign and the Cradley Heath strike of 1910, Midland History, 12, pp. 85-102
29. Sheila Blackburn (1988) Working-class Attitudes to Social Reform: Black Country chain-makers and anti-sweating legislation, 1880-1930, International Review of Social History, 33, pp. 42-69
30. Blackburn, 'Working-class Attitudes to Social Reform'. Male and female chain-makers' joint campaigns for co-operative workshops, voluntary arbitration and uniform hours of work are, of course, obvious examples of mutual assistance across gender divisions
31. Blackburn, 'Sweated labour and the Minimum Wage', pp. 48-49
32. Blackburn, 'No necessary connection with homework', p. 275
33. Morgan, 'Gender construction', p. 377
34. Blackburn, 'Employers and Social Policy', p. 97
35. I point out, for example, that the long awaited trade board failed to match up to the expectations of the workers. The latter had to strike twice in 1910 and 1911 to achieve their minimum wage, rates were set lower for women than for men, whilst employers attempted to wreck the board and evade its determinations. The board also strengthened the power of the employers. See Blackburn, 'Working-class Attitudes to Social Reform', especially pp. 65-67
36. On the whole, I would agree with Ellen Meiksins Wood that capitalism affects every aspect of life, including gender, that we could theoretically have gender equality within capitalism but that the disappearance of class inequalities is incompatible with capitalism. See Ellen Meiksins Wood (1990) The Uses and Abuses of 'Civil Society' in Ralph Miliband, Leo Panitch & John Saville (Eds) The Socialist Register, p. 76 (London: Merlin Press)
37. The published census data record that in 1861 there were only 572 females and 2324 males engaged in chain-making. In 1911, at the peak of women's participation in the industry, 2103 females were officially recorded as being employed in the industry. According to Tawney, who utilized information supplied by trade union officers, there were 1500 male factory workers, 670 male domestic workers and about 2000 female domestic workers in 1911. See R.H. Tawney (1914) The Establishment of Minimum Rates in the Chainmaking Industry under the Trade Boards Act of 1909, p. 4 (London: Bell). It is likely that both census statistics and Tawney's figures somewhat underestimate the numbers involved in chain-making, although to an unknowable degree
38. Morgan, 'Gender Constructions', p. 378. See also James Schmiechen (1984) Sweated Industries and Sweated Labor: the London clothing trades, 1860-1914 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press), pp. 147-174. A more minor error, though suggestive of an unassured treatment of the industry, is the assertion that 'the deplorable conditions and low wages prevailing in the outworking section of the trade had gained considerable attention with an exhibition of sweated industries in London in 1906' (Morgan, 'Gender Constructions', p. 378). However, chain workers only made an appearance at the later exhibitions held in Birmingham in 1908 and at Earls Court, London, in 1909. The sponsors of the 1906 exhibition did not feel it was feasible to feature a working example of the trade. See Birmingham Mail, 23 May 1908; Daily News, 20 July 1909, and County Express, 24 July 1909
39. Blackburn, 'Employers and Social Policy', especially pp. 98-99. Schmiechen also overlooks entirely the role of the powerful, all-party pressure group, the National Anti-Sweating League (NASL). Formed in 1906, the NASL was essential in converting the public to a minimum wage. See Sheila Blackburn (1991) Ideology and Social Policy: the origins of the Trade Boards Act, Historical Journal, 34, p. 55
40. Savage also notes that the type of local collective action depends on how these markets interrelate with other factors such as the skill structure, the nature of local gender relations and the power of neighbourhood identity. See Savage, The Dynamics of Working Class Politics, pp. 51-56. In his more recent work, Savage has also stressed the need to examine the role of space in class formation. Utilising network concepts, he compares dense ties, based on work and locality, with wide-ranging ties formed from broader alliances with other groups. See M. Savage (1996) Space, Networks and Class Formation, in Neville Kirk (Ed.) Social Class and Marxism: defences and challenges, pp. 58-86 (Aldershot: Scolar Press)
41. Taylor suggests that the Black Country working class were passively resigned to their low living standards. An overstocked labour market, constant insecurity of employment, fierce competition for work and low pay all led to a weak commitment to collectivist ideals. He believes that this Black Country fatalism has persisted to the present. See Eric Taylor (1974) The Working Class Movement in the Black Country, 1863-1914, University of Keele, unpublished PhD thesis, pp. 2-3, 30, 37
42. Christina Corby (1992) Reading the Victorians, Victorian Studies, 36, p. 71
43. An exception is the pioneering and theoretically ambitious attempt at such an approach by Glucksmann. See Miriam Glucksmann (1990) Women Assemble: women workers and the new industries in inter-war Britain (London: Routledge)
44. Van der Linden, 'Connecting Household and Labour History', p. 63
45. Horrell & Humphries, 'The Origins and Expansion of the Male Breadwinner Family'