Earning respect: the lives of working women in small-town Ontario, 1920-1960.

Earning respect: the lives of working women in small-town Ontario, 1920-1960. Toronto: University of Toronto Research at the University of Toronto has been responsible for the world's first electronic heart pacemaker, artificial larynx, single-lung transplant, nerve transplant, artificial pancreas, chemical laser, G-suit, the first practical electron microscope, the first cloning of T-cells, Press, 1995, pp. X, 333,Illustrations. These three books all relate to the intersections of women'shistory ''This article is about the history of women. For information on the field of historical study, see Gender history.Women's history is the history of female human beings. Rights and equalityWomen's rights refers to the social and human rights of women. and urban history and, as such, have important things to sayabout how women's lives are influenced, shaped and constrained bythe particular built environment and social relations embodied in thatspatial arrangement Noun 1. spatial arrangement - the property possessed by an array of things that have space between themspacingplacement, arrangement - the spatial property of the way in which something is placed; "the arrangement of the furniture"; "the placement of the in which they live and, in turn, how their livesinfluence, shape and constrain those built environments and socialrelations. This is not to say that all three authors would situate sit��u��ate?tr.v. sit��u��at��ed, sit��u��at��ing, sit��u��ates1. To place in a certain spot or position; locate.2. To place under particular circumstances or in a given condition.adj. themselves in this way; Strange clearly does but Sangster is first ofall the combination of women's history and the history of work andDubinsky, women's history and the history of sexuality. But bothSangster and Dubinsky are interested in space and the ways in whichspace plays itself out with gender, class and race. The idea of intersecting factors is central to all three books; butit is very much the variety of groups of women -- most often byemployment status and family position but also by class, by race, byage, by sexual orientation sexual orientationn.The direction of one's sexual interest toward members of the same, opposite, or both sexes, especially a direction seen to be dictated by physiologic rather than sociologic forces. , and by language -- that preoccupies theauthors. How to understand these differences, and the multiplicity ofpatterns of women's lives that results, represents a majorchallenge. Doing justice to the multiplicity while trying to tell aclear story is not easy: what is the main argument? How do class andrace affect gender in specific circumstances? What is the relativeweight of material conditions and the construction of discourses infashioning these influences? And, in terms of my preoccupation for thecity or the built environment, how do the interrelated influences ofgender, class and race write themselves onto space? Carolyn Strange's Toronto's Girl Problem looks at whyToronto, during the late 19th century, thought it had a girl problem.Her argument is that the idea of the wage-earning single womancrystallized Toronto's fears about urbanization andindustrialization industrializationProcess of converting to a socioeconomic order in which industry is dominant. The changes that took place in Britain during the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and 19th century led the way for the early industrializing nations of western Europe and and that these fears were projected onto these women.It was particularly the idea of their sexual autonomy that fuelled theconstruction of their lives as a "problem". The city therefore influenced the lives of these women. Not so muchthe city as a physical form but the social organization of the city,particularly the professional reformers and the club women who saw thesingle working women as central to the problem, and therefore thesolution, of urban vice. Strange brings together wonderful material onthe ways in which the Local Council of Women, journalists, policeofficers and working women themselves constructed versions of theirlives. More concern was placed on what "the girls" did afterwork than during work. These people, who paid them poor wages andoffered them insecure employment, were less interested in knowing aboutthis influence than in fantasizing about the promiscuity PromiscuitySee also Profligacy.Anatolconstantly flits from one girl to another. [Aust. Drama: Schnitzler Anatol in Benét, 33]Aphroditepromiscuous goddess of sensual love. [Gk. Myth. of the workingwoman. As Strange says, this is an area where gender, class and raceintersect particularly clearly, and, with the rise of non-Britishimmigration immigration,entrance of a person (an alien) into a new country for the purpose of establishing permanent residence. Motives for immigration, like those for migration generally, are often economic, although religious or political factors may be very important. from the 1880s on, the image of foreign men and the"working girls" fuelled the articulation of the "girlproblem". The city did impact on the lives of these wome. Strange discussesthe creation of organizations for healthful health��fuladj.1. Conducive to good health; salutary.2. Healthy.healthful��ness n. leisure, the medicalization medicalizationSocial medicine A term for the erroneous tendency by society–often perpetuated by health professionals–to view effects of socioeconomic disadvantage as purely medical issues of the question (the "psychiatric discourse to debates aboutworking girls and their inappropriate pleasures", p. 128) and theinvention of delinquency. This is not to suggest that these measures ofsocial control were uniformly successful; the working women of CarolynStrange are also agents of and actors in history. Indeed, the women in this way also influenced the city, mostclearly in their contribution to Toronto's development as anindustrial metropolis, but also in opening up the city to a greaterinclusion of diversity. By the 1920s, Strange argues, the city had cometo terms with working women. The interrelations of changing materialconditions and the changing expressions of these conditions contributedto the disappearance of the "girl problem". Joan Sangster is also interested in the impact of the community onthe lives of the working women within that community. Her bookinterviews women who worked in four places in Peterborough, both whitecollar and blue. As Sangster says, "while my research began with acentral focus on the workplace, it grew beyond this emphasis onproductive relations, paying more attention to the interconnectionsbetween women's familial, community and workplace lives" (p.4). Peterborough was known as the "working man's city"and this image transmitted the ideas of interconnectedness, hierarchy,patriarchy and neighbourliness Noun 1. neighbourliness - a disposition to be friendly and helpful to neighborsgood-neighborliness, good-neighbourliness, neighborlinessfriendliness - a friendly disposition . As well, the small town environment wasseen by Sangster as one of the forces that facilitated the accommodationof women to the work world. There were also forces supportingresistance, and Sangster analyzes in detail union organization and unionactivity. It was not only Peterborough, but also social constructions ateven broader levels -- including the place of women in society, and thefamily wage -- that fashioned women's employment in the workplacesstudied by Sangster. Both operated to reinforce the primaryidentification of women with the family and only secondarily with thework world and, therefore, the dichotomous di��chot��o��mous?adj.1. Divided or dividing into two parts or classifications.2. Characterized by dichotomy.di��chot view that underlays thesevery notions of primary and secondary identifications. But Sangster also sees these women as actors and their persistencein the work world will, over time, lead from the period of the"working daughter" to the "working mother". It alsoleads to an influence on the city although this was slow to occur. Thefirst day-care centre was not set up until 1967, and was dependent bothon "different economic and social conditions" and on"altered consciousness on the part of working women" (p. 256).Once again, material conditions and the construction of dis course areboth essential to our understanding the ways in which gender, class andrace intersect and translate themselves in space. Dubinsky's central theme is neither work nor leisure, it issexual violence. Improper Advances studies the 400 stories of Ontariowomen who brought complaints of physically-coerced sex to the police,between the years 1880 and 1929. It is, as with the two other books,about the social construction of gender. Her concern is in fact morewith rural Ontario than with cities) but Dubinsky is interested in boththe social and spatial settings for sexual violence. And, despite thecultural stereotypes about the "stranger" and the danger ofsexual assault, the reality, not surprisingly, is completely different.The number of cases of sexual violence is highest for household members(66), followed by strangers (51), neighbours (46), dates (40), againstchildren (39), gangs (30), and friend of family (23). In broadercategories, women were assaulted, in 175 cases, by people they knew ascompared to 95 cases where they did not know their aggressor. In otherwords Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke"put differently , the "private" world is more dangerous than the"public". It is the confining of women to the private sectorthat increases the danger in their lives. This reality underlines thefact that sexual violence is about power and unequal power relations. Dubinsky goes on to explore the impact of these constructed genderrelations on the construction of space, more particulady, on thedevelopment of Northern and rural Ontario. She makes an intriguingargument about moral boosterism boost��er��ism?n.The highly supportive attitudes and activities of boosters: "the civic pride and heady boosterism that often accompany rising property values"New York., about the "convergence ofdiscourses -- of national economic and social development, genderrelations, sexual morality, and crime. ... The perceived need foreconomic growth and the desire to cleanse one's community of vicethus arose from the same impulse and often from the same people (p.161). What comes across most strikingly from these books is thedifficulty women have had, in a variety of different spaces and times,to affirm their autonomy and, conversely, the difficulty society has hadin dealing with women's autonomy. In fact, as the books indicate inwonderful detail, society has "dealt" with women'sautonomy by medicalizing it, criminalizing it, channelling it intohealthful recreation, marginalizing it and by creating a variety ofdiscourses that legitimated lower wages, insecure employment, sexualviolence, sexual stereotyping, etc, etc, etc. Sexual autonomy is perhapsthe form of autonomy that most frightened society for both Strange andDubinsky, but economic autonomy is also important in Strange and centralin Sangster. The city was often the focus for these struggles aroundautonomy, both because the material conditions underpinning autonomy(particularly women's paid employment) were established first inthe citie, but also because the social actors "articulating"the discourses were often urban. The books all attempt to deal with women as both actors and actedupon, as creating their own lives and having their lives fashioned,constrained and constructed by forces beyond their control. The authorsall deal with race, class and gender and also, and perhaps more directlyin these studies, with family and employment status. The struggle forautonomy is not a struggle for isolation, since women's autonomy isalso embedded in community, family and work. But what these studies makeclear is that the question of women's autonomy raised, andcontinues to raise, fears, resistance, justifications and a wholevariety of terrains of struggle. The telling of these stories, asStrange, Sangster and Dubinsky have demonstrated, is both wonderful anddepressing. Caroline Andrew Political Science University of Ottawa The University of Ottawa or Universit�� d'Ottawa in French (also known as uOttawa or nicknamed U of O or Ottawa U) is a bilingual [1], research-intensive, non-denominational, international university in Ottawa, Ontario.