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Women Textile Workers in the Twentieth Century: An Oral History of the Huddersfield Woollen District 1930-1990

By using oral history as the primary research method, the aim of this thesis is to document and analyse the experiences of women woollen textile workers in the mid-twentieth century. The thesis contains a critique of oral history as a research method in general and the feminist practice of oral history in particular. In order to locate the women in the study in a particular place, there is description of the development and eventual collapse of the woollen textile industry in the Huddersfield area of West Yorkshire.
Tape recorded interviews were carried out with 17 women. The key findings from their experiences fall into two main areas. The first relates to the experiences the women describe about the daily routine within the woollen mill, especially for new recruits and the tasks they had which were unconnected with their job. The second relates to the descriptions of the actions the women took during the collapse of the industry.
This thesis contributes to the wider body of work on working class women and offers original insights into the experiences of women who worked in an industry which has all but disappeared.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/13981
Date January 2014
CreatorsPerfitt, Belinda Jayne
ContributorsJennings, Paul
PublisherUniversity of Bradford, School of Archaeological Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences
Source SetsBradford Scholars
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis, research masters, MPhil
Rights<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Licence</a>.

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