Abstract
The relationship between the state and women has long been a neglected and historically under-informed area of research. In part this is accounted for by a theoretical insistence that the state chiefly functions in relation to the struggles between capital and labour. It has been feminists who have insisted that the state also acts to secure the conditions that continue to define the subordination of women, and that political struggle also concerns gender as well as class relations. However, much feminist analysis has also remained at the level of theoretical debate that has tended to result in an either/or dichotomy of state interests in relation to capitalism and patriarchy. Other work (Hartmann, 1979; Barrett, 1980; Walby, 1986) has argued such a dichotomy is unproductive, even though there are differences between authors on how that duality is to be conceptualised. Further, theoretical resolution is problematic if attention is not paid to empirical data that seeks to demonstrate state action in relation to women in a number of different spheres.
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© 1990 British Sociological Association
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Harrison, B., Mockett, H. (1990). Women in the Factory: The State and Factory Legislation in Nineteenth-Century Britain. In: Jamieson, L., Corr, H. (eds) State, Private Life and Political Change. Explorations in Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20707-7_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20707-7_8
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