Women Workers and Technological Change in Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries ed. by Gertjan de Groot, Marlou Schrover

Abstract

technology and culture Book Reviews 783 able extent, a widely shared faith in the efficacy of technology also encouraged shortsighted problem solving. For scholars already familiar with Tarr’s work, The Search for the Ultimate Sink is more than a convenience. Tarr has added a signifi­ cant new section to one essay and chosen some stunning photo­ graphs as illustrations. In his introduction, he also gives a thoughtful account of how he came to write each piece. The result is an indis­ pensable work. Through deep research and careful analysis, Tarr has enriched our understanding of a vital historical issue. Adam Rome Dr. Rome teaches American environmental history at the Pennsylvania State Uni­ versity. His publications include “Coming to Terms with Pollution: The Language of Environmental Reform, 1865-1915,” Environmental History 1 (July 1996): 6-28. Women Workers and Technological Change in Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Edited by Gertjan de Groot and Marlou Schrover. London: Taylor & Francis, 1995. Pp. ix+206; illustra­ tions, notes, index. $24.95 (paper). This admirable collection of ten essays analyzes the ties between women’s work and technology far more coherendy than many other anthologies. The book focuses on case studiesofindustry to showhow women gained or lost prominence in hosiery, textile, secretarial, munitions, pottery, dairy, and other food industries. We do not often see the view of diffusion that these authors present, demonstrating how technologies that spread from England to Holland, Denmark, and Sweden affected women workers. Each article begins and ends with a concise summary of the main points, making the volume par­ ticularly accessible to students or nonnative readers of English. Most importantly, these authors join head-on the central issues for women in technological history, and their conclusions help us to understand some of the puzzles that obscure the realities ofwomen’s situation. As Marlou Schrover puts it in her discussion ofDutch food industries, “technological change influenced women’s work . .., but was seldom the direct reason, or excuse, for the regendering of work” (p. 170). For other industries, technological change was only the excuse for switching women into low-paying tasks; the real rea­ son for women’s low wages was the prevailing belief that men, not women, had the responsibility to be the family breadwinners. The expectation of the male family wage, a norm accepted by trade unions as well as working-classwomen, was the single most important destabilizer ofwomen’s work. For this reason, women’s work earned low pay no matter how crucial or how skilled it was. In various exam­ ples, the authors demonstrate the editors’ view that “skill is an ideo­ logical category imposed on certain types of work by virtue of the 784 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE sex and power of the workers who perform it” (p. 5). Whether “the gender division oflabor was transferred from one country to another along with the technology” (p. 52), as in Dutch cotton spinning mills, or became gendered in the first factory and then generalized as the industry spread, women’s work was termed unskilled and paid less. Why didn’t the women protest? A number ofreasons emerge: they “had developed no way to contest the lower evaluation oftheirjobs” (p. 30) ; class and family claims kept them loyal to the union ideol­ ogy; the Victorian separation ofjobs as suitable for one sex or the other held sway. Hints that preindustrial work was less divided by gender suggest the importance of studying women’s role before the 19th century. The authors of this collection offer us trenchant lan­ guage and pointed questions to link the history of women in work and technology in every era. Daryl M. Hafter Dr. Hafter, professor of history at Eastern Michigan University and a Dibner Fel­ low in 1996-97, is the author of European Women and Preindustrial Craft (Blooming­ ton: Indiana University Press, 1995). ManufacturingInequality: GenderDivision in theFrench and British Metal­ working Industries, 1914-1939. By Laura Lee Downs. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995. Pp. xiv+329; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95 (cloth). The “munitionette,” smiling, trousered, lunch bucket in hand, is one of the enduring images of women’s contribution to the First World War. Although...