Diane Kirkby, Barmaids: A History of Women’s Work in Pubs. Cambridge University Press, 1997.

2003 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 100-105
Author(s):  
Julia Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Women's Work ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Women’S Work ◽  
History Of

Domestic Service in Australia. By B. W. Higman. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi, 358.

2003 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 269-270
Author(s):  
Pamela Sharpe
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Women's Work ◽  
Domestic Service ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Women’S Work ◽  
Remote Station ◽  
History Of ◽  
Service Jobs ◽  
Women In The Workforce ◽  
Very High

When I first arrived in Australia as a backpacker in the mid-1980s my job possibilities included negotiating a job as a governess on a remote station through an agency, and, when a café proprietor offered me a job, just a few minutes later finding myself alone in her house confronting a vast mound of laundry and other housework with no terms discussed and no prospect of lunch. I had applied to be a waitress but I felt like a slave. I did not know much about Australia or service jobs at that stage and neither of these positions stuck. I never worked in a bar although the Aussie barmaid might best illustrate the Australian stereotype of female service as Dianne Kirkby has shown in her recent work (Barmaids: A History of Women's Work in Pubs, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997). It is interesting to place such experiences in the context of Barry Higman's excellent new book. For all the male and macho impressions of the pioneering male conquering the alien landscape of the outback, in fact colonial Australia had a very high proportion of women in the workforce. Yet the concept of service somehow sits oddly with the egalitarianism of Australian culture.

Women's Work in Agriculture: Divergent Trends in England and America, 1800 to 1930

1992 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 248-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally McMurry
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Women's Work ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Agricultural Work ◽  
Women’S Work ◽  
Sexual Division Of Labor ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Background ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American

English cheeses—Cheddar, Gloucester single or double, Cheshire, Stilton, and others—are familiar throughout the Anglo-American world, whether consumed after dinner in English homes or as key ingredients of American tex-mex or vegetarian cuisine. These famous cheeses originated long ago but in most cases reached a zenith in quantity and in reputation during the last century. Little is known about the history of English cheese dairying, despite its fame and its importance to agriculture past and present. Its economic background has received only slight attention, and its social history is almost entirely unexplored; yet clearly the social structure of English cheese dairying has historically exerted a major influence on the industry, because it traditionally depended upon a distinctive sexual division of labor. The history of women's work in English cheese dairying has implications for a broader historiographical question: When and why did women gradually disappear from many kinds of agricultural work in Western societies?

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