Women Who Work in Factories

The current feminist literature largely ignores women who work in factories and their special problems. Is this justifiable? Is industry truly a declining sector in the economy, employing an ever-decreasing percentage of the labor force while the service sector keeps expanding? Women in the academy and the mass media have been organizing to demand their rights; so have some welfare mothers, domestic workers, and white-collar workers. Have the voices of the blue-collar women not been heard because their numbers are declining to a point where improving their conditions is not worth the effort?

Statistics show no such decline. The proportion in the U.S. of women among industrial workers—as well as the proportion of women industrial workers among all working women—has remained stable. This is borne out by the latest figures available from the U.S. Department of Labor, covering the years 1967, 1968, and 1969. In those three years the numbers of blue-collar women were 4.597 mil...