The making of a woman's town: household and gender in Dundee 1890 to 1940

Abstract

From the introduction: Women in Dundee's history are often portrayed as different from women who lived elsewhere. Their ability to survive difficulty has been praised by some historians (see, for example, Gordon, 1991), while other historians have gone so far as to claim that they displayed masculine characteristics (see, for example, Walker, 1979). Oral evidence suggests that Dundee women seem to have had a much more developed level of gender and class consciousness than other women achieved. Some of these women expressed and used this understanding in their own working lives. For example, Bella Keyzer was a woman who fought, in the 1960s, to return to her wartime trade as a welder. In the late 1980s, Bella appeared in a number of television oral histories, in which she was often presented as a feminist, particularly since her critique of gender definitions of skill and wage rates fitted radical feminism so closely. Like others in Dundee, however she was keen to emphasise that her ideology was recognised as arising out of practical experiences, rather than from theoretical musings.