Honest Womanhood: Feminism, Femininity and Class Consciousness Among Toronto Working Women, 1896-1914

If these arguments are correct [i.e., arguments against a sexist psychological interpretation], then we must set ourselves another course to explain the failure of working class women in the 1896 to 1914 [period] to respond to their problems in a more explicitly collective fashion. The framework for such an alternative explanation rests upon a more concrete understanding of the work-life and work-place ecology of working women. Reliance on reliable clichés and "momified" abstractions about feminine psychology has hindered a recognition of the strictures that demographic and occupational influences placed on the possibilities for a concerted action. Combined with an appreciation of some of the thoughts and activity of working women, this approach should help us to reevaluate both the objective constraints and organizing capacities of the woman worker and the interplay of various aspects of her consciousness--particularly her feminism, her sense of feminity and her class consciousness. --From author's introduction

OCLC: 15842035