Women and the Trade Union Movement in New South Wales: 1890-1900

Abstract

This paper focuses on the period 1880 to 1900, and sets out to docu ment how female workers in N.S.W. were gradually drawn into organised struggle.1 Up to the 'eighties female involvement in the union move ment had been either negligible or nil. At least two factors had con tributed to their absence. First, the dominant ideology?which identified woman's place as being within the home?percolated through class barriers, and was as strong within the Labour Movement as anywhere else. The 'bourgeois family ideal'2 was widely subscribed to within N.S.W. from at least 1850 because males enjoyed relatively high wage levels; the disparity in wages between skilled and unskilled workers was small;3 and the structure of the economy was such that there were rela tively few opportunities for women to engage in social production. Second, prior to 1870 unionism was confined to 'the skilled trades of a non-industrial community'.4 Unionism amongst the unskilled generally, and not just women, was limited. It was only during the 'seventies and 'eighties that workers who had been outside craft organisation started to enter the trade union movement.