1. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 1996 Social History Society Conference in Glasgow and the women's history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research. I would like to thank Pamela Sharpe, my colleagues Adelheid von Saldern, Claus Füllberg-Stolberg, and Volker Wünderich as well as two anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions
2. See, for example, John AngelaBy the Sweat of Their Brow: women workers at Victorian coal-minesCroom Helm; London 1980 Cockburn CynthiaMachinery of Dominance: women, men and technical know-howPluto Press; London 1985 Collinson David Knights David ‘Men Only’: theories and practices of job segregation in insuranceGender and the Labour ProcessKnights David Willmott Hugh Gower; Aldershot 1986 140 178Unequal Opportunities: women's employment in England, 1800-1918John Angela Blackwell; Oxford 1986 Milkman RuthGender at Work: the dynamics of job segregation by sex during World War IIUniversity of Illinois Press; Urbana 1987 Mariana Valverde (1987) ‘Giving the female a domestic turn’: the social, legal and moral regulation of women's work in British cotton mills, 1820-1850, Journal of Social History, 21, pp. 619-634; Bradley HarrietMen's Work, Women's WorkPolity Press; Cambridge 1989 Ellen Jordan (1989) The exclusion of women from industry in nineteenth-century Britain, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 31, pp. 309-326; Williams ChristineGender Differences at Work: women and men in nontraditional occupationsUniversity of California Press; Berkeley 1989 Deborah Valenze (1991) The art of women and the business of men: women's work and the dairy industry, c. 1740-1840, Past and Present, 130, pp. 142-169