Women, Work, and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-Century England by Bridget Hill

Abstract

424 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE made to innovations in productive technologies, such as the use of just-in-time supply systems, andon boards for showing any problems appearing on the production line, and the introduction of computers during the 1960s. It is also apparent that many production technol­ ogies have been complemented by Taylorist managerial methods, such as the use of standardized work charts and carefully calibrated work schedules. But, since this is an official company history, there is little hint that labor relations have been anything but harmonious; the reader will have to consult Satoshi Kamata’s Japan in the Passing Lane for a very different view of a Toyota worker’s life on the job. The book has even less to say about the technologies embodied in the cars themselves. In part this may be due to the fact that, at least until recently, Japanese cars have generally not been in the forefront of technological advance, while Toyota’s products have been more technically conservative than most. In any event, it is apparent that the producers of the book have had limited interest and understand­ ing in the subject, as evidenced.by confusing descriptions of valve mechanisms (p. 149), references to efforts to “streamline the engine block” (p. 320), and a statement that one model exported to Canada encountered difficulty because “its ignition did not always turn over” in cold weather. Perhaps it is asking too much for a general history of a vast company to devote a significant amount of attention to technical matters, even though they are a key component of the firm’s success. Still, it hardly seems a good use of space to burden the text with endless narratives on the establishment of sales networks, chronolo­ gies of foreign distribution arrangements, and numerous hortatory statements by top executives. It is evident that the intended audience of the book consists of members of the Toyota organization and not the general reader, and still less the serious student of the Japanese economy or the international automobile industry. The history of Toyota provides a striking example of the successful importation, refinement, and development of advanced technologies, but this book gives few clues as to how it was accomplished. Rudi Volti Dr. Volti is professor of sociology at Pitzer College, the Claremont Colleges. He is working on a study of the development of the internal combustion engine during the early 20th century. Women, Work, and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-Century England. By Bridget Hill. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Pp. viii + 275; notes, index. $39.95. The impetus behind Bridget Hill’s study of women workers in 18th-century England is an appreciative update of the classic work of TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 425 Ivy Pinchbeck (1930) on the role of English women in the Industrial Revolution. After sixty years of debate about the nature of industri­ alization and its relationship to pre- or proto-industry, what more do historians who are interested in Pinchbeck’s analysis of gender and work know about the connections among women workers, technolog­ ical change, and economic and social life? Hill is pursuing answers to that perennial question for historians of working women: How did women fare during industrialization? What was lost and what was gained? As a basis for her analysis, Hill looks at women’s contributions to unpaid but valuable household activities and at female wage earning in both agricultural work and household production within the context of long-term and uneven early industrial change. Her chap­ ters include descriptive material on female apprenticeships, house­ work, domestic service, and the ways in which economic develop­ ments affected the economy and legal position of married women and of widows and spinsters. The strength of this work is Hill’s assembly (and teasing out of traditional sources) of evidence on women’s work, especially in early 18th-century England, a topic long neglected by historians before and after Pinchbeck. Hill’s argument affirms and extends Pinchbeck’s view of the prein­ dustrial world of 18th-century England as a golden age of female access to training and productive work, an age destroyed by industry. She agrees that trends in the...