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In this study of the clothing industry in Canada, historian Mercedes Steedman examines how the intricate weaving together of the meanings of class, gender, ethnicity, family, and workplace served, often unconsciously, to create a job ghetto for women. Although 'girls', as working women were labelled, comprised a significant majority of garment workers - 80 percent in 1881, at the very beginnings of industrialization; 68 percent in 1941, when the percentage of women in all industrial sectors in Canada was only just over 15 percent - their roles were circumscribed both in the workplace and in the trade union bureaucracy. When strikes occurred, women were at the front of picket lines, gaining sympathy and favourable media coverage for the workers' cause. But when negotiations among union leaders, management, and government officials took place, women were conspicuous by their absence, and the subsequent agreements and job classifications invariably left them with lower wages and marginal status - in an industry where they were numerically dominant and often valued as the better workers. In "Angels of the Workplace," Professor Steedman presents a history of both the garment industry and the role of women in it. The rise of left-wing unionism held out some hope for a more equitable work environment, but by the 1930s a 'new unionism' that focused on labour-management co-operation - and on maintaining male hegemony on the shop floor and at the bargaining table - had formalized gender discrimination in the needle trades for the rest of the century. -- Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction: Across the Great Divide -- The Industrial Fields of Activity: Send Forth Your Daughters -- Worlds Apart: Women and Unions in the Needle Trades, 1890-1920 -- From Shop-Floor Action to New Unionism: The War Years and After -- Taking a Stand: Civil War in the Needle Trades -- 'A Real Man's Fight': Clothing Battles in the Depression Years -- When the Boys Get Together: Orchestrating Consent -- After the Acts: Setting the Standards, Putting on the Pressure -- Conclusion: 'This Group of Girls and Men .... '