"In Women, Gender and Industrialisation in England, Honeyman draws on recent scholarship to suggest that the contributions of women workers influenced the direction and progress of the nation's manufacturing industry. This portrayal of women as central and proactive in industrial change lies in stark contrast to the images of women as cheap, malleable, poorly skilled and expendable labour that typify historical accounts.

There is no doubt that women were often treated shamefully by employers and male co-workers during the period of industrialisation, but most women were then, as they are now, highly competent, extremely diligent, flexible and adaptable. This book explains the processes by which male workers and others undervalued such qualities, and explores the mechanisms by which industrial society in the nineteenth century emerged as one centrally defined by gender."--BOOK JACKET.