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`What a Difference a Day Makes': A Theoretical and Historical Exploration of Temporality and Gender

This paper explores the potentialities and distinctiveness of a temporal perspective for analysing differences between and within genders. After a brief overview of sociological approaches to time, it suggests the value of `an economy of time' framework for analysing work, especially those forms which involve no monetary exchange. Exchanges of time can be seen to establish their own reciprocities, inequalities and hierarchies, thus forming a wider basis for the analysis of social and gender division than one resting on a more narrow, say monetary, economic premise. The central sections attempt to demonstrate these points using oral history research on married women who began work in Lancashire during the inter-war years. Weavers and casual women workers are contrasted with respect to three dimensions of temporality: (1) the temporal structure of work/time in waged work, domestic labour and leisure, and exchanges of time between themselves and their husbands, employers and each other; (2) the temporality of life-course events and the structure of memory; and (3) the division between public and private. I argue that the findings (that the two groups differed systematically on all dimensions both in their use and subjective experience of time) have contemporary and conceptual implications extending beyond the particular case study, including a reconceptualisation of `standard' working time and what constitutes `economy'.

Key Words: difference • gender • household • inequalities • oral history • time • work

Sociology, Vol. 32, No. 2, 239-258 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/0038038598032002002


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