Women in the Printing Trades: A Sociological Study.
General
Women in the Printing Trades: A Sociological Study.
Printing industry -- Great Britain; Women -- Employment -- Great Britain; Women printers -- Great Britain; Working class women -- Great Britain
Trades unionism forms another species of "artificial monopoly," the
organisation of men in the printing trades being much stronger than that
of women. The difference is partly accounted for by the fact, already
noticed in other connections, that woman having an eye to marriage is
not equally wedded to her trade. Some frankly admit that "marriage is
sure to come along, and then they will work in factories and workshops
no longer" (p. 42). Whatever the cause, it appears from the Editor's
historical retrospect that women's unions have not flourished in the
trades under consideration. All attempts to organise women in the
printing trade proper, as distinguished from the bookbinding industry,
have failed. Even the Society of Women Employed in Bookbinding, though
organised by Mrs. Emma Paterson, seems to have had only a moderate
success. Thus the men unionists have had their way in arranging that
their standard wage should not be lowered by the influx of cheap labour
offered by women.
Some unions indeed admit women on equal terms with men, with less
advantage to the former than might have been expected. A regulation of
this sort adopted by the London Society of Compositors is followed by
the result that "it is practically impossible for any woman to join the
society" (p. 28). At Perth a few years ago, when women began to be
employed on general bookwork and setting up newspaper copy, the men's
union decided that the women must either be paid the same rates as the
men or be got rid of altogether (p. 46). One general result of such
_primâ facie_ equalitarian regulations is probably to promote that
crowding of women into less remunerative occupations which was above
noticed as a cardinal fact of the situation. It is for this reason
apparently that Mrs. Fawcett does not welcome the principle that
"women's wages should be the same as men's for the same work." "To
encourage women under all circumstances to claim the same wages as men
for the same work would be to exclude from work altogether all those
women who were industrially less efficient than men" (see the article by
Mrs. Fawcett referred to in the _Economic Journal_, Vol. III. p. 366,
and compare her article in that Journal, Vol. II. p. 174, already
cited).
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