Women on the Line

149 Pages·2009·1.8 MB·English

by  Miriam Glucksmann aka Ruth Cavendish

Women on the Line
Women on the Line is a pioneering ethnographic classic of the world of work in a British
motor components factory. Miriam Glucksmann, a well-known contributor to the study of
gender, work and employment, is for the first time revealed as the author, along with the
identity of the company, product and factory.
Recording the experience of migrant women from Ireland, the Caribbean, and the Indian
subcontinent with the immediacy of a diary, this is a unique account from an observing
participant of the daily routines of repetitive work, a strike led by women from below, and
the temporalities of work, home, children and leisure. This vivid narrative of life on the
assembly line is combined with an analysis of the intersections of gender, ethnicity and
class that prefigures subsequent theoretical advances.
This edition contains a new introduction situating the book in contemporary debates and
developments and includes original photographs taken on the shop floor at the time.
Miriam Glucksmann is Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex. She has made
a major contribution to the understanding of work, employment and gender, and the
connections between different forms of labour. Women on the Line was her first research-
based book in this area, followed by Women Assemble (1990), Cottons and Casuals (2000),
and the jointly-edited A New Sociology of Work? (2005). She has held many research
fellowships and visiting professorships at home and abroad, and is a Fellow of the British
Academy. As an ESRC Professorial Fellow she recently completed a three year research
programme on ‘Transformations of Work: New Frontiers, Shifting Boundaries, Changing
Temporalities’.
A welcome reissue of a classic feminist ethnography of work, with a fascinating new
author’s introduction, which should win a new readership. Glucksmann’s focus on
what would now be known as ‘intersections’ of gender, class and ethnicity explodes
the myth that 1970s and 80s feminism was insensitive to diversity.
Harriet Bradley University of Bristol, UK
Miriam Glucksmann casts her experienced eye over three decades of political
engagement, work transformation, and research regimes with their new ways of
seeing and thinking. Revisiting her classic study of women on the line, she shows
just how much sociology has changed in step with, but also independently of, the
world it seeks to comprehend. What better way of studying history than to reflect
back on a great ethnography, what better way of studying the potentialities of the
present than against such a concrete lived experience of the past. A pioneering revisit
to a pioneering ethnography!
Michael Burawoy University of California, Berkeley, USA
Although written over two decades ago from the perspectives of socialist feminism
and political economy, Women on the Line remains one of the most inspiring pieces
of research on gender and working class women. Here you find in great detail issues
that are now top of the agenda—gender and the body, emotion, time and space, as
well as technology. The book demonstrated so clearly how all these were embedded
in gendered social structure and capitalist organization. Written in a lucid style, the
stories of these working women truly come to life.
Ling-fang Cheng Graduate Institute of Gender Studies,
Kaohsiung Medical University, Taiwan
This is one of the great ethnographies of industrial society, a work of bitter realism
and careful thought. In vivid detail, it catches the almost feudal hierarchies in fac-
tory life, and the solidarity and divisions among working women. It analyzes the
work/life problem in its starkest form, and the reasons change and social justice get
stalled.
Raewyn Connell University of Sydney, Australia
This book packs more insight per page than any other case study I’ve read, and gives
the sense of the factory so well you can see it and smell it. The author’s added reflec-
tions on changes in the economy, industry and neighbourhood since the fieldwork was
done enrich the picture immeasurably. In her new reflections, Glucksmann places the
story of a particular factory at a particular historical moment in a broader perspective
which is rich in evocative detail about the place and time, weaving the theoretical
material into the story in a way that enhances the reader’s ability to see the big picture
of social change. Women on the Line remains the gold standard for an empathetic but
unromantic account of gender relations, and a cure for a-historical nostalgia.
Myra Marx Ferree University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
It is wonderful news for Japanese readers that Miriam Glucksmann’s landmark work
is being republished. Women on the Line was remarkably distinctive as an outstand-
ing ethnography, developing a clear analysis of working class female factory workers
with such a lively touch. The author’s incisive analysis has a compelling force that
reaches beyond time-space constraints. This edition will renew the attention of Japa-
nese readers to a monumental study of women and labour.
Kimiko Kimoto Graduate School of Social Sciences, Hitotsubashi University,
Tokyo, Japan
Re-reading Women on the Line is like stepping back into another time: of women’s
industrial employment, trade union organizing, an active women’s movement. And
yet, its re-publication could not be more welcome as in the intervening years, partici-
patory studies of employment have expanded exponentially. The reissue provides the
opportunity for a fascinating re-examination of some of the most difficult issues that
face researchers: how to gain access to people and places, whether to identify the firm,
the product, the place, the workers and, in this case, the author herself. It also pre-
sciently reveals the importance of the connections between class, gender and ethnicity
in the workplace that have become a central concern of feminist analyses of women’s
lives. Finally we can all openly acknowledge Miriam Glucksmann’s achievement.
Linda McDowell University of Oxford, UK
As a classic ethnographic study of women workers on the assembly line, Miriam
Glucksmann’s Women on the Line is a terrific work from which I learnt about politi-
cally engaged feminism and contemporary social debates on gender and class. It
provides tremendous insights for my own study of Chinese women workers at the
context of socialist transformation and global capitalism.
Pun Ngai, author of Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace,
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
Women on the Line is a wonderful participant observation study of women workers
in a London factory in the 1970s. When published, it was highly acclaimed. Today,
republished with a new introduction, it is time to pronounce it a classic in economic
sociology, the sociology of gender and a few other genres as well.
Richard Swedberg Cornell University, USA
Even after nearly thirty years, this account of women’s factory lives, their juggling of
work/life responsibilities, and view of the world from the bottom up, has an imme-
diacy of the present. The new introduction reveals hidden truths and brings the politi-
cal issues of the time to bear on those of today.
Polly Toynbee The Guardian, UK

Women on the Line
Miriam Glucksmann
aka Ruth Cavendish
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 1982 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
New edition published 2009 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of
Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks
please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 1982, 2009 Miriam Glucksmann aka Ruth Cavendish
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Glucksmann, Miriam.
Women on the line/Miriam Glucksmann aka Ruth Cavendish.
p. cm.
Previous ed. entered under Ruth Cavendish.
1. Women automobile industry workers—England—Case studies. 2. Assembly-line methods—Case
studies. 3. Industrial sociology—Case studies. I. Cavendish, Ruth, 1946– Women on the line. II.
Title.
HD6073.A82G73 2009
331.4′8292220942–dc22
2008039937
ISBN 0-203-88383-7 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-47641-0 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-415-47642-9 (pbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-88383-7 (Print Edition) (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-47641-6 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-47642-3 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-88383-9 (Print Edition) (ebk)
Contents

List of illustrations viii
Introduction to 2009 edition: From experience to reflection: changes and

continuities in women’s work ix
Preface to 1982 edition: Freedom of speech xxix

1 A factory job 1
2 The company 6
3 Jobs on the line 9
4 Getting to know the women 26
Arlene 26
Rosemary 30
Together on the line 34
Anna 39
Josey 41
Life outside 43
5 The division of labour 46
6 The dictatorship of production 59
Speed up 59
Control of the line 64
Doing time 67
Physical survival 71
7 Bonus and wages 75
8 The union and the dispute 82
The union 82
The dispute starts 84
The main assembly goes slow 84
Suspension—the other manual workers join us 86
Women in the machine shop 87
Divided and defeated 90
Return to work 92
9 What to make of it? 95
Illustrations
Plates

1 1982 cover page xxxa
2 Alice assembling a speedometer between pages 21a and 21e
3 Miriam at her work bench, ‘flyover’ to between pages 21a and 21e

the right
4 Nora, the calibrator at the top of the between pages 21a and 21e

line
5 Veronica and Arlene by the conveyor between pages 21a and 21e

belt
6 Daphne and Alice at their work between pages 21a and 21e

benches
7 Arlene at her work bench between pages 29a and 29b
8 Rosemary, on the left, with Doreen between pages 29a and 29b
9 The shopfloor with the new conveyor between pages 60a and 60b

belt
10 My work bench between pages 60a and 60b
11 Anna and daughter Jill clocking in between pages 67a and 67b
12 Filling thermos flasks at the ‘water between pages 67a and 67b

hole’
13 Machine shop supporters during the between pages 88a and 88b
strike. The ‘Polish’ woman is on the
right
14 Carol, the shop steward, with Ann, between pages 88a and 88b

Daphne and Alice, left to right
Figures

3.1 Jobs on the line: The Princess UMO 14
3.2 Jobs on the line: The Maxi UMO 20
Introduction to 2009 edition
From experience to reflection: changes and continuities in
women’s work
One of the peculiarities of living with a pseudonym is to be asked if I know Ruth Caven-
dish. More than a quarter of a century since Women on the Line was first published I con-
tinue to meet people who know her work and mine, but do not realise the connection until
I tell them. Then they understand why they have never seen her at conferences and why
she never wrote anything else. Yet, when the book appeared in 1982, four years after I left
the factory, and despite all the precautions taken to disguise everything about it, its identity
was known to the firm’s supervisors. I still lived in the same area and often met women I
had worked with in the street. A few weeks after publication, I was taken aback to be told
that ‘they’ know ‘it’s your book’. Apparently it was reviewed in a tabloid newspaper and
reference made to the works committee representative who ran a raffle no one had ever
been known to win and sold so-called free range eggs on the site (p. 137). This was enough
to give the game away.
Republication provides the occasion for reflecting on what is now a historical docu-
ment relating to a very different political and industrial epoch. It also permits disclosure of
details that had to be concealed in the original, and allows me to elaborate the theoretical
analysis of the book which was quite understated. In many ways the context has changed
out of all recognition. But there are also continuities and transmutations, and many of the
issues raised during my experience in the factory resonate with ongoing discussions in
sociology and feminism. The style of the book was deliberately accessible; it was primarily
intended for a non-academic readership that included activists in the various social move-
ments of the time, trades unionists and those concerned with current affairs. Nowadays the
readership for a book on work is more likely to be students and academics, though journal-
ists’ writings in similar vein (Ehrenreich 2002 and Toynbee 2003) certainly reach a much
wider spectrum.
The political context
Women on the Line was based on my experience of working for nine months on the assem-
bly line of a large motor components factory in London in 1977–1978. The stimulus to
do this emerged directly out of my involvement in feminist and socialist politics, in order
to explore one of the major issues exercising the Women’s Movement in the late 1970s:
why organised feminism appeared not to be relevant to, or not to involve, working class
women. I took a factory job for political reasons rather than for sociological research, and
I did not think of it as ethnography or participant observation, although that is how it was
later understood.
It is difficult now to convey the political atmosphere that made taking a factory job not
a strange thing to do. This was an epoch, just before the election victories of Thatcher and
Reagan in 1979 and 1980, of sharp political division and conflict, with strong demarcation
lines between left and right, progressive and reactionary, and their opposing visions of vir-
tually every aspect of life. The climate in Britain was of major industrial disputes, public