Technology and culture Book Reviews—Labor and Technology 937 This is a careful and sophisticated study. It may not provide defin itive answers to the questions of what effect the war had on women (Milkman says it was a watershed in terms of female labor force par ticipation, but it clearly was not in terms of the sexual division of labor) or why job segregation takes a particular shape at a particular time (why “girls without skirts” in one plant but not another?), but Milkman has done a marvelous job of tracing the persistence of sex segregation in rapidly changing economic circumstances. Leila J. Rupp Dr. Rupp teaches history at Ohio State University. She is the author of Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda, 1939—1945 and the coauthor, with Verta Taylor, of Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women's Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s. Brothers: Male Dominance and Technological Change. By Cynthia Cockburn . Dover, N.H.: Pluto Press, 1986. Pp. 264; notes, index. $8.95 (paper). This is a book researched and written at several levels. It does not, in my view, warrant its title, for it does not deal with technology in general or, except in a vague way, with male dominance in general. The study treats the British printing industry, and especially the Lon don newspaper industry, and, even in this arguably distinctive sphere, it does not clearly show that technological change had a great deal to do with male dominance save in failing to dislodge it and, perhaps, in prompting an uneasiness among skilled male workers that made them less flexible on gender issues than they might otherwise have been. Cynthia Cockburn does contend, in closing, that current tech nological change opens an opportunity for a real restructuring of class and gender, and ofcourse this may prove to be so. But in covering past technological change, she emphasizes failures to shake off a preexisting patriarchy, rather than the causal link the title may imply. The book’s actual focus, in most of its chapters, involves tracing the technological developments that have rocked British printing, and London newspaper compositors particularly, from the late 1950s on ward, through the introduction of cold composition and computers. A background chapter sketches earlier technological developments ac curately enough to about 1910, with perhaps some overemphasis on continuity. The shock generated by more automatic devices around 1900, though noted, is downplayed in favor of a tendency to point out similarities between a printer’s work in 1950 and that of his Caxtonera counterpart. In the main, however, the history is competent if frankly derivative. The 1910—50 period is ignored, rather unfortu nately in terms of much active use of technological history in framing the sociological inquiry that follows. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE 938 Book Reviews—Labor and Technology Brothers hits its stride in dealing with the recent technological up heaval in printing. Well-written sections describe the equipment itself, the effects on work, and the causes, on both the management and labor sides, for its introduction (correctly noting that technology’s availability is insufficient explanation). Interviews with fifty male work ers are intelligently used to convey the effect on outlook and sense of value. The author’s own experience in printing serves well in con veying technical change and its results. Worker confusion, particularly in reassessing skilled trade union traditions, is also well handled. A parallel theme involves tracing the systematic exclusion of women from the skilled printing trades and their organizations. A brief his torical sketch conveys the tradition accurately, and trade union policies and arguments around the turn of the century are well summarized (and condemned). The gradual entry of more women into printing and its unions from the 1970s is outlined without great detail. The men’s impulse to respond to recent technological change by a contin ued desire to emphasize their separate masculinity shows through clearly from the interviews. Although no great surprises are involved, save perhaps in showing men’s ingenuity in devising noble-sounding reasons and policies for exclusion, the book clearly demonstrates male monopoly and the link between gender definition and concept ofwork in skilled printing. Cockburn hopes, particularly in the...