Women’s involvement in the Birmingham printing industry and allied trades in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
The main purpose of this study is to establish the extent to which women were involved in the Birmingham printing industry and allied trades and ascertain factors that contributed or constrained their participation as owners, employees, contributors or consumers.
It is concerned with the extent to which cultural and social preoccupations, trade unions, lack of agency, the availability of and access to education and training steered women into gender ‘appropriate’ and normally low-skilled and low-paid trades, and impeded women’s admittance to more highly skilled occupations within the printing industry.
It is in this context that this study explores the extent to which Birmingham’s diverse economy, based primarily on the small workshop tradition, may have helped female entrepreneurship and how the composition of printing and allied trades changed throughout the nineteenth-century either through mechanisation, workplace legislation or the organisation of employees and owners into trade unions and professional bodies.
A greater understanding of these changes will help to determine the degree to which women’s participation was further restricted while at the same time, new opportunities became available to them.
