Women, Work and 'Civilised' White Australia: Assessing Responses to Women in Factory and Sweated Labour

Abstract

The thesis deals with a moment in 1911 when there was an intense interest in women undertaking allegedly ‘problematic; factory and sweated labour. The thesis analyses these responses and illustrates that they were informed by the anxiety of race suicide and notions of appropriate ‘womanliness’. It, however, argues that the responses to these types of labour cannot be understood without attention to the discourse of civilisation. The transnational discourse of civilisation, which stressed that civilised societies had achieved a gender division of labour, fundamentally underpinned the alternative and often contradictory responses to and prescriptions for the ‘problem’ of women working in factories and women working as sweated labourers.