1st Edition

Women and Work in Britain since 1840

By Gerry Holloway Copyright 2005
    320 Pages
    by Routledge

    320 Pages
    by Routledge

    The first book of its kind to study this period, Gerry Holloway's essential student resource works chronologically from the early 1840s to the end of the twentieth century and examines over 150 years of women’s employment history.

    With suggestions for research topics, an annotated bibliography to aid further research, and a chronology of important events which places the subject in a broader historical context, Gerry Holloway considers how factors such as class, age, marital status, race and locality, along with wider economic and political issues, have affected women’s job opportunities and status.

    Key themes and issues that run through the book include:

    • continuity and change
    • the sexual division of labour
    • women as a cheap labour force
    • women’s perceived primary role of motherhood
    • women and trade unions
    • equality and difference
    • education and training.

    Students of women’s studies, gender studies and history will find this a fascinating and invaluable addition to their reading material.

    1. Introduction  2. ‘Fit Work for Women’ Working Class Women and Paid Work in the Mid Nineteenth Century  3. The Problem of the ‘Superfluous Women’  4. Women Organizing: Trade Unions and Other Industrial Organizations  5. Equal or Different? Divisive Issues in the Industrial Women’s Movement  6. Women’s Work Before the First World War  7. Out of the Cage? Women’s Experience of Work During the First World War  8. Women’s Work in the Interwar Period  9. Women’s Employment in World War Two: Continuity or Change?  10. Back to Home and Duty again?  11. Women’s Employment in the 1950s and 1960s  12. Women’s Work in the Age of Equal Opportunities: 1969 to the End of the Century  13. Women’s Work since the 1840s.  Appendix 1: Chronology of Important Dates.  Appendix 2: Brief Biographies of Some Key Women

    Biography

    Gerry Holloway is a lecturer in Life History and Women's Studies at the Centre for Continuing Education at the University of Sussex. She has written extensively on women’s history and the feminist movement and is on the Committee of the Women’s History Network.