ABSTRACT
Turning to employers' demand for dairymaids and dairymen, this chapter analyzes job advertisements and assesses women's and men's relative positions in increasingly hierarchical workplaces. Although many dairymaids and dairymen had similar training and were equally qualified for skilled jobs, employers were extremely reluctant to allow women to supervise adult men. They regarded dairymaids as particularly well suited for specialized jobs in product preparation and sales, while favoring men for jobs involving managerial oversight and technical coordination. In these respects, then, gender was more important than education or demonstrated skills in relegating women to lower level jobs. Instances of differential treatment when men and women had identical training show that, as feminist scholars have suggested, gendered definitions of skilled work are socially and culturally constructed and change over time.
