Reflections in colonial glass? Women factory inspectors in Britain and New Zealand 1893-1921

Abstract

This article explores the establishment of women factory inspectors in the wake of a common sweating furore in Britain and New Zealand. Sweating reformism was not simply transplanted in New Zealand from the motherland. It is argued that Britons and New Zealanders developed related illusions about anti-sweating which had important implications for the confinement of women's work. In New Zealand female factory inspectors were held to be symbols of successful anti-sweating reform, while in Britain they were celebrated for their investigation and exposure of industrial conditions since here reform was limited. The women themselves knew the limits of their success. And they embodied a contradiction. The rationale for their employment was that women's work was different from men's and female employment needed to be regulated. Female factory inspectors accepted this formula for factory workers but were averse to it being applied to their own employment. In this regard, the female factory inspectors experience as workers themselves is as revealing as their occupational duties to reform sweating and other industrial conditions for women. Despite many social differences, the way in which female factory inspectors in colony and 'mother country' dealt with the contradiction between regulating blue and white collar employment was remarkably similar. The article presents this contradiction in the context of the relation of women factory inspectors to the wider feminist movement.