The politics of women's work : the Paris garment trades, 1750-1915 /
Coffin, Judith G.,1952-
Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press,
c1996.
Few issues attracted more attention in the nineteenth century than the "problem" of women's work, and few industries posed that problem more urgently than the booming garment industry in Paris. The seamstress represented the quintessential "working girl," and the sewing machine became the icon of "modern" femininity. The intense speculation and worry that swirled around both helped define many issues of gender and labor that concern us today. In this wide-ranging history of the Parisian garment industry, from the unraveling of the guilds in the late 1700s to the first minimum wage bill in 1915, Judith Coffin explores how issues related to working women took shape. What constituted "women's" work? Did women belong in the industrial labor force? Why was women's work equated with low pay? Should not a woman enjoy status as an enlightened homemaker/consumer?
In this fascinating combination of the social history of women's labor and the intellectual history of nineteenth-century social science and political economy, Coffin sets many such questions in their fullest cultural context. She examines the century-long historical processes that made gender fundamental to the modern social division of labor and our understanding of it.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [259]-274) and index.
Ch. 1. Women's Work? Men and Women, Guild and Clandestine Production in Eighteenth-Century Paris -- Ch. 2. Machinery, Political Economy, and Women's Work, 1830-1870 -- Ch. 3. Selling the Sewing Machine: Credit, Advertising, and Republican Modernity, 1870-1900 -- Ch. 4. The Revival of Homework: Many Routes to Mass Production -- Ch. 5. Married Women's Work: Wage Earning, Domesticity, and Work Identity -- Ch. 6. Unions and the Politics of Production -- Ch. 7. Social Science and the Politics of Consumption -- Ch. 8. The Minimum Wage Bill: Work, Wages, and Worth.
Few issues attracted more attention in the nineteenth century than the "problem" of women's work, and few industries posed that problem more urgently than the booming garment industry in Paris. The seamstress represented the quintessential "working girl," and the sewing machine became the icon of "modern" femininity. The intense speculation and worry that swirled around both helped define many issues of gender and labor that concern us today. In this wide-ranging history of the Parisian garment industry, from the unraveling of the guilds in the late 1700s to the first minimum wage bill in 1915, Judith Coffin explores how issues related to working women took shape. What constituted "women's" work? Did women belong in the industrial labor force? Why was women's work equated with low pay? Should not a woman enjoy status as an enlightened homemaker/consumer?
In this fascinating combination of the social history of women's labor and the intellectual history of nineteenth-century social science and political economy, Coffin sets many such questions in their fullest cultural context. She examines the century-long historical processes that made gender fundamental to the modern social division of labor and our understanding of it.
Women clothing workers
Women
Clothing trade
Needlework industry and trade