Women Assemble: Women Workers and the New Industries in Interwar Britain

Women were drawn into assembly-line work in large numbers in the 1920s and 1930s with the introduction of methods of mass production. Many new occupations were created but all were sex-typed from the start, assembly lines for consumer goods being strictly feminine. The pattern of gender segregation that emerged had important effects for the relation between men and women as workers, and between women and capital. The inter-war period also saw the creation of the "ideal home" and the "ideal housewife" and laid the basis for a transformation in the domestic economy. "Women Assemble" explores the connections between women's work in the home and paid employment. Ready-made food, off-the-peg clothing, domestic electrical appliances, and many of the other new goods produced by women in the workplace were also consumed by women in the home. Changes in domestic labour with the expansion of domestic technology, and the shift from domestic service towards factory work, contributed to the development of a new sexual division of labour. "Women Assemble" highlights an important and often overlooked area of women's employment and its historical findings are used to address contemporary questions in the study of class, gender and the labour process.