Threads of solidarity: women in South African industry, 1900-1980

Abstract

Part I - gender industrialization: gender, community and working-class history dependency and domesticity - women's wage labour, 1900-1925. Part II - women in the new industrial unions: patterns of women's labour, 1925-1940 daughters of the depression commandos of working women a lengthening thread. Part II - a new working class and the challenge of diversity: nimble fingers and keen eyesight - women in wartime production a new working class, 1940-1960 a solidarity fragmented - garment workers in the Transvaal food and canning workers in the Cape - the structure of gender and race standing united never far from home - family, community and working women. Part IV - decentralization and the rise of independent unions: city and periphery, 1960-1980 repression and resistance.