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A Woman’s “Natural” Work: Sewing and Notions of Feminine Labor in Northeast Ohio, 1900-1930

Benoit, Colleen S.

Abstract Details

2011, MA, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History.
This thesis explores the social and cultural significance of sewing and its place in the factory, the domestic arts education movement, and the home during the rise of the garment trade between 1900 and 1930 in Northeast Ohio. Long viewed in American culture as women’s “natural” work, this study takes a more critical look at how sewing functioned in the lives of women during a time of great economic and social change in the context of the Progressive Era, push for suffrage, rise of mechanized industry, and influx of immigration. Through a historical investigation of women’s work and systems of gendered labor, this thesis examines how expectations of femininity were translated across class and racial lines but remained embedded in sewing even as it moved out of the home, into schools, and onto the factory floor. Garment industry leaders relied on this notion of sewing as women’s natural work to hire them as hand sewers and machine operators in factories, a job that drastically deskilled sewing and removed any of its traditional domestic attachments. During this same period, the domestic arts movement became a staple in girls’ education and marketed sewing as a domestic skill and duty of a good wife and mother. Such lessons did not prepare young women for work in any of the sewing trades and instead encouraged knowledge of sewing as a means of honing maternal instinct and domestic capacity. Despite these opposing contexts in which sewing was performed, women remained active negotiators in the debate over how sewing would function in their lives. Dependent on racial and class situations, women often disregarded the loaded cultural expectations of sewing and found ways to use the craft as a means of social empowerment. In conclusion, sewing cannot be accepted as a commonplace past time and when examined historically, often reveals much about the construction of gender and gender expectations.
Elizabeth Smith-Pryor, PhD (Advisor)
John Jameson, PhD (Committee Member)
Rebecca Pulju, PhD (Committee Member)
123 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Benoit, C. S. (2011). A Woman’s “Natural” Work: Sewing and Notions of Feminine Labor in Northeast Ohio, 1900-1930 [Master's thesis, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1302280135

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Benoit, Colleen. A Woman’s “Natural” Work: Sewing and Notions of Feminine Labor in Northeast Ohio, 1900-1930. 2011. Kent State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1302280135.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Benoit, Colleen. "A Woman’s “Natural” Work: Sewing and Notions of Feminine Labor in Northeast Ohio, 1900-1930." Master's thesis, Kent State University, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1302280135

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)