Women and the Making of the American Working Class

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between the development of the working class and changes in the sex-structuring of occupations through a case study of newspaper compositors in the United States from 1850 to 1880. The purposes of this study are to provide data and analysis to aid in the development of a theory of workingclass formation which includes female as well as male workers, and to contribute to the debate about the roots of women's exploitative condition in the labor market. Changes in the sex-structuring of occupations are shaped by the uneven development of capitalism and the strategies developed by capital and labor to define the terms of the class relation. It is mediated by the conjuncture of two sets of contradictions-those located in the process of capital accumulation, and those located in working-class culture. The coexistence of various printing branches and other industries which had been differentially affected by capitalism resulted in divisions among workers who faced different material conditions and who pursued different class strategies. Newspaper publishers' strategies were to reorganize job processes, and to recruit female workers from other printing branches and from textile and clothing industries. Male newspaper compositors' strategies were to establish cooperative relations with female printers and to fight for "equal pay for equal work" for all printers, including women. Printers' strategies were undermined, in part, by internal contradictions within their culture. This study concludes that class fractioning along gender lines requires an understanding of the interrelationship of patriarchy and class as historical processes.