Biding Their Time: Women Workers and the Regulation of Hours of Employment in the 1920s

Abstract

This chapter examines the impact on gender relations of the legislative regulations placed on the hours of employment of women workers, focusing particularly on the debates which took place in the 1920s.¹ Restrictions on the hours of employment for women workers, and specifically the exclusion of women from night shifts in certain industrial sectors, were first introduced in the nineteenth century. The controversies which the original night shift prohibition aroused, including the resistance to the imposition of the protective measures by women workers themselves, the antagonisms generated with both male colleagues and employers, and the disputes arising between different manufacturing districts, were evident also in the 1920s. By the early 1930s, however, scientific ‘evidence’ was beginning to be published which challenged the basic assumption that night shift employment was injurious to women.