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This is a story of two Ontario towns, Hanover and Paris, that grew in many parallel ways. They were about the same size, and both were primarily one-industry towns. But Hanover was a furniture-manufacturing centre; most of its workers were men, drawn from a community of ethnic German artisans and agriculturalists. In Paris the biggest employer was the textile industry; most of its wage earners were women, assisted in emigration from England by their Canadian employer. Joy Parr considers the impacy of these fundamental differences from a feminist perspective in her study of the towns' industrial, domestic, and community life. She combines interviews of women and men of the towns with analyses of a wide range of documents: records of the firms from which their families worked, newspapers, tax records, paintings, photographs, and government documents. Two surprising and contrasting narratives emerge. The effects of gender identities upon both women's and men's workplace experience and of economic roles upon familial relationships are starkly apparent. Extending through seventy crucial years, these closely textured case studies challenge conventional views about the distinctiveness of gender and class roles. They reconfigure the social and economic change accompanying the rise of industry. They insistently transcend the reflexive dichtomies drawn between womena dn men, public and privae, wage and non-wage work. They investigate industrial structure, technological change, domesticity, militance, and perceptions of personal power and worth, simultaneously as products of gender and class identities, recast through community sensibilities. --Publisher's description

This is a story of two Ontario towns, Hanover and Paris, that grew in many parallel ways. They were about the same size, and both were primarily one-industry towns. But Hanover was a furniture-manufacturing centre; most of its workers were men, drawn from a community of ethnic German artisans and agriculturalists. In Paris the biggest employer was the textile industry; most of its wage earners were women, assisted in emigration from England by their Canadian employer. Joy Parr considers the impacy of these fundamental differences from a feminist perspective in her study of the towns' industrial, domestic, and community life. She combines interviews of women and men of the towns with analyses of a wide range of documents: records of the firms from which their families worked, newspapers, tax records, paintings, photographs, and government documents. Two surprising and contrasting narratives emerge. The effects of gender identities upon both women's and men's workplace experience and of economic roles upon familial relationships are starkly apparent. Extending through seventy crucial years, these closely textured case studies challenge conventional views about the distinctiveness of gender and class roles. They reconfigure the social and economic change accompanying the rise of industry. They insistently transcend the reflexive dichtomies drawn between womena dn men, public and privae, wage and non-wage work. They investigate industrial structure, technological change, domesticity, militance, and perceptions of personal power and worth, simultaneously as products of gender and class identities, recast through community sensibilities. --Publisher's description

This article reviews the book, "Sisterhood Denied: Race, Gender, and Class in a New South Community," by Dolores E. Janiewski.

Examines the hierarchy of labour by men on Ontario farms from the colonial period to the 1980s. Argues that despite changes over the past two centuries in in the relationships of labour, capital and land, the rural agricultural class system has endured. Concludes that the farm labour regime of low wages and few legal protections continues to be firmly entrenched.

This article reviews the book, "An Ordered Love: Sex roles and sexuality in Victorian Utopias--the Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community," by Louis J. Kern.

This article reviews the book, "Discovering Women's History: A Practical Manual," by Deirdre Beddoe.

Contents: Introduction -- 1. British Working Children -- 2. Salvation and the Safety-valve -- 3. The Promised Land -- 4. Family Strategy and Philanthropic Abduction -- 5. Apprenticed or Adopted -- 6. Household and School -- 7. Adulthood -- 8. Twentieth-century Policy. Appendix: Analysis of Case Records. "With a new introduction" - cover. First published in 1980.

[This book] is a collection of essays that surveys the burgeoning field of gender history in a Canadian context. Spanning a period from seventeenth century to the 1960s, and covering the regions of Canada, the selections focus on different historical representations and pratices of feminity and masculinity. Historians in the field examine neglected dimensions, and challenge previous interpretations of Canada's past, highlighting the importance of gender relations to our understanding of racism, sexuality, national identity, popular culture, class conflict, government policy, and family in Canadian history. --Publisher's description. Contents: Gender history and historical practice / Joy Parr -- Categories and terrains of exclusion : constructing the "Indian Woman" in the early settlement era in Western Canada / Sarah Carter -- Real men hunt buffalo : masculinity, race and class in British fur traders' narratives / Elizabeth Vibert -- Race, gender and Canadian immigration policy : blacks from the Caribbean, 1900-1932 / Agnes Calliste -- Like a Chinese puzzle : the construction of Chinese masculinity in Jack Canuck / Madge Pon -- "Of slender frame and delicate appearance" : the placing of Laura Secord in the Narratives of Canadian loyalist history / Cecilia Morgan -- Commemorating the woman warrior of New France : Madeline de Verchères, 1696-1930 / Colin M. Coates -- "The pleasure is exquisite but violent" : the imaginary geography of Niagara Falls in the nineteenth century / Karen Dubinsky -- Through a hole in the lavatory wall : homosexual subcultures, police surveillance, and the dialectics of discovery, Toronto, 1890-1930 / Steven Maynard -- A manly sport : baseball and the social construction of masculinity / Colin Howell. Masculinity, fraternity, and respectability in Halifax at the turn of the twentieth century / Judith Fingard -- "We may all soon be first-class men" : gender and skill in Canada's early twentieth century urban telegraph industry / Shirley Tillotson -- Memories of work, family, and gender in the Canadian Merchant Marine, 1920-50 / Eric Sager -- "Have you no manhood in you?" : gender and class in the Cape Breton coal towns, 1920-26 / Steven Penfold -- Families, private property, and the state : the Dionnes and the Toronto stork derby / Mariana Valverde -- The queer career of homosexual security vetting in Cold War Canada / Daniel J. Robinson & David Kimmel -- Elderly men and women in a Halifax working-class suburb during the 1920s / Suzanne Morton -- Fatherhood and the social construction of memory : breadwinning and male parenting on a job frontier, 1945-1966 / Robert Rutherdale.

The experiences of working women are explored in Women, Work, and Place. Tied together by the conceptual theme "place matters," the essays emphasize the social, cultural, economic, historical, and geographical contexts in which women work, and the effect of specific conditions on women's experiences. Topics include the transformation of the work force in nineteenth-century Montreal (Bettina Bradbury), feminization of skill in the British garment industry (Allison Kaye), the relationship between work and family for Japanese immigrant women in Canada (Audrey Kobayashi), experiences of women during a labour dispute in Ontario (Joy Parr), contemporary restructuring of the labour force in the United States (Susan Christopherson) and in an urban context in Montreal (Damaris Rose and Paul Villeneuve), the effect of gentrification on women's work roles (Liz Bondi), inequality in the work force (Sylvia Gold), and theoretical issues involved in understanding women in the contemporary city (Linda Peake). An introductory essay provides a review of current issues. --Publisher's description