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Technology and Culture 42.3 (2001) 580-581



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Book Review

More than Munitions: Women, Work and the Engineering Industries, 1900-1950


More than Munitions: Women, Work and the Engineering Industries, 1900-1950. By Clare Wightman. London: Longman, 1999. Pp. viii+207. $49.

Clare Wightman's More than Munitions explores the history of women's work in the British engineering industries from 1900 to 1950. After placing her book in the context of literature on the history of workplace control, feminist labor history, women's wartime work, and sexual segregation at work, Wightman surveys women's work opportunities in Britain in general and their employment opportunities in the engineering industries in particular. Explaining that "engineering has never been a single industry" (p. 30), Wightman explores the contours of engineering trades and how they changed over time. She shows how older industries, such as mechanical engineering, and newer engineering ventures, including aircraft production, electrical engineering, and motor and cycle manufacturing, were subject to different economic forces and hired women at different rates.

It will come as no surprise to most historians that women were a minority, albeit a growing one, in the engineering trades, that they were employed in greater numbers in the newer engineering industries, and that they were highly segregated in the workplace. After this overview, More than Munitions examines the changing fortunes of women workers in depth and over time. Wightman covers the experiences of both the world wars, women's work in the interwar period, industrial disputes, collective bargaining, and the postwar role of women in the industries.

This is a fascinating book. Wightman contradicts much past and current scholarship on women's work in Britain. She makes that contradiction explicit when she juxtaposes her work with that of scholars such as Laura Lee Downs and Miriam Glucksmann, whom she characterizes as arguing [End Page 580] that "gender ideology shaped how women were employed and paid" (p. 4). Repeated many times and in many contexts, the thrust of Wightman's argument is that gender ideology, which she defines as "a socially defined notion of suitability" (p. 188), was not the driving force behind sexually segregated workforces. According to Wightman, you cannot understand the contours of women's employment if you argue that ideas about gender are the central and determining factor that created job segregation by sex. Thus, throughout the book she examines how a variety of factors shaped women's work lives--the structure of engineering work, changes in production methods, unstable markets, and shifting divisions of labor as well as gendered ideas about women's suitability for employment.

Wightman's point that a number of things affect the ways in which workplaces are sexually segregated merits serious consideration. Still, there are a number of pitfalls in her argumentation. More than Munitions argues that for gender ideology to be an important cause of segregation by sex, its proponents must show that there was "an unambiguous gender struggle" and that the male protagonists "sought to promote the interests of men over women" (p. 14). Wightman's conceptualization of gender does not allow that it could be dynamic, changing, and unevenly applied. If she could have incorporated a more nuanced analysis of the process of gendering into her work and still maintained the thrust of her argument, her point would seem more compelling and believable.

Nor does More than Munitions consider the possibility of skill being socially constructed. Instead, Wightman treats skill separately and asserts that employer and male employee concerns about skill prove that gender ideology is not the only factor at work in the engineering workplace. Given the persuasive arguments of such historians of technology as Judith McGaw and Nina Lerman, it is strange to read an analysis that assumes that skill and gender are discrete categories of analysis. Perhaps a more encompassing vision of the meaning of skill would have led Wightman to consider the ways that skill and gender might be historically interlinked.

Despite these problems, More than Munitions challenges us to reflect on the meanings of gender and skill and...

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