Examining the experiences of women workers in the cotton and small metals industries and the discourses surrounding their labour, this book demonstrates how ideas of womanhood often clashed with the harsh realities of working-class life.

Women Workers and Gender Identities, 1835 - 1913 examines the experiences of women workers in the cotton and small metals industries and the discourses surrounding their labour. It demonstrates how ideas of womanhood often clashed with the harsh realities of working-class life that forced women into such unfeminine trades as chain-making and brass polishing. Thus discourses constructing women as wives and mothers, or associating women's work with distinctly feminine attributes, were often undercut and subverted.

'Morgan is to be congratulated on producing such a coherent and sophisticated analysis from the daunting array of data and theoretical perspectives on offer. The lucid presentation disguises an immensely complicated narrative, and the brevity if the text belies an impressive breadth and depth of knowledge.' - Katrina Honeyman, Northern History, September 2002