Angels of the Workplace: Women and the Construction of Gender Relations in the Canadian Clothing Industry, 1890-1940.

Angels of the Workplace: Women and the Construction of Gender Relations in the Canadian Clothing Industry, 1890-1940. By Mercedes Steedman (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997. ix plus 333pp.).

In this study of an industry which women numerically dominated, sociologist Mercedes Steedman provides a fascinating analysis of the process of gender discrimination that condemned them to second-class status and inferior rewards. Like other social scientists, she has found the garment industry to be a particularly fertile ground for investigating the gender dynamics of work. In Canada, the ready-made clothing industry was one of the earliest and largest industrial employers of women. Before the First World War women accounted for approximately 80 per cent of workers, and in 1941, for just under 70 per cent. The mixed ethnic composition of the work force, and the fierce struggle of trade unions of various ideological stripes to gain a firm foothold in the industry, provide additional grist for the researcher's mill.

Steedman situates her study in a now familiar feminist theoretical framework that highlights class, gender, and ethnicity as the primary determinants of women's experience. She also stresses the interconnectedness of family and workplace, arguing that patriarchal ideals and family practices regarding proper roles for women and men moulded gender relations in the workplace. Thus when women, who were ideally to be angels in the home, took to the factory floor, "they were perceived as 'angels', the 'other', separated from the earthly hierarchy and expected to follow the bidding of the men who worked around them ... "(2).

As the author herself concedes, however, the "angel" analogy is not entirely fitting. Clearly women in the clothing industry were fully human and struggled daily against the consequences of being caught in an earthly hierarchy in which they occupied the lowest ranks. A more accurate title for the book might have been "Little Sisters" in the Workplace: Men's Treatment of Women in the Ontario and Quebec Clothing Industries, 1890-1940, since the focus is on how men in the garment industry in central Canada constructed gender relations in the workplace. According to Steedman, working-class men treated women workers as "little sisters" who needed men to speak for them and to protect them. She traces in great detail how trade unionists acted with male managers and government officials to define and redefine what constituted skilled labour to the detriment of women workers.

Although Steedman represents the women workers in her introduction as "highly skilled workers ... ready to take action in the streets or factories, to do battle with the authorities of government and workplace ... "(2), most of her discussion underlines their marginality because it concentrates on men's actions. Men in the industry consistently robbed women of their identity as adult workers by referring to them as "girls" and by viewing them as unskilled or semi-skilled, transient workers. Thus one is left wondering about the extent of female workers' agency, since little evidence is presented for it. The author does use interviews with a handful of retired female garment workers to attenuate the male-dominated narrative by giving women a voice. It is regrettable, however, that she did not conduct more interviews with French-Canadian workers, who accounted for the majority of workers in the Quebec garment industry after 1930. Another useful source of information about French-Canadian workers and their activ ism would have been the Montreal newspapers, but there is no evidence that the author used either the English-language or the French-language press. By using these sources, Steedman might have been able to provide a more satisfying explanation as to why" ... young French-Canadian women moved into a union movement led by older Jewish men" (176) who did not view them as their equals. She mentions only very briefly the Quebec Catholic trade union movement during the 1930s. Yet, in early 1937, approximately one hundred employers in the Montreal garment industry recognized affiliates of the Confederation des travailleurs catholiques du Canada as the bargaining agent for their employees. Thus, by familiarizing the workers with industrial trade unionism, the Catholic unions helped to lay the groundwork for the organizational drive and famous strike led by the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in 1937.

As Steedman's book reveals, the Canadian garment industry was incredibly complex. Men's and women's clothing production had distinctive characteristics and dynamics, and each was further fragmented into various manufacturing sectors (coats, suits, shirts, dresses, etc.) The age, gender, and ethnic composition of the work force varied considerably according to type of clothing manufactured, As a result, the author's detailed account is complicated and sometimes hard to follow. Organizing the material first by industry sector and by province (men's clothing industry or women's clothing industry in Ontario/Quebec) and then chronologically within each sector might have made it easier for the reader to extract significant comparisons and contrasts in the consequences of the sexual division of labour and union activities across sectors.

A strength of this book is the insight it provides into why most unions held little attraction for women workers in the inter-war period. It was not only their patriarchal structures and attitudes that severely limited their appeal for women, but also male union leaders' choices of battles to be fought and methods for fighting them. As Steedman observes, women workers were more interested in issues that affected them directly; for example, who set wage rates was much more important than whether the wage was determined by the week or by the piece. Some women workers she interviewed indicated that they actually preferred the piece-rate system since they believed it gave them more control over the labour process. Male trade unionists, by contrast, considered piecework anathema, for it was associated in their minds with unskilled labour, exploitative working conditions, and with a loss of control and dignity. According to Steedman, the major advantage of unionization for women was the establishment of shop commi ttees where workers had a direct say. However, after 1930 the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, embraced new forms of trade unionism that stressed tripartite cooperation among labour, capital, and the State. As a result, negotiations and decision-making increasingly came to rest in the hands of small, elite groups of men. As the author tersely observes, "The lawyers took over (226)." She therefore concludes that women workers were able to act with greater agency in the early part of the twentieth century, before organized labour won industry-wide settlements. Women then had their own locals in some instances, and were also able to form occasional alliances with middle-class feminists which "gave them the space to speak as women rather than as genderless members of the working class to speak politically of their rights to equal pay for equal work"(255).

Through her examination of the discourse, structures, and labour-management relations associated with the Canadian garment industry, Steedman provides us with valuable insights into power relations in the workplace, and the dynamics of male hegemony. Her work is certain to provide the basis for continued discussion about the complex relationship between class and gender.

University of Waterloo