ABSTRACT
It is strongly emphasized in a number of the national overviews that there was no such thing as a common textile worker experience even within a single national or regional entity. 1 Rather, a diversity of forms of production, workforce composition and economic and commercial environments combined to produce a range of historical experiences across time and space. Some of the most fundamental divisions within and between workforces were related to the use of male and/or female workers, and constructions of gender impacted on, and were influenced by, the coexistence of and competition between different forms of production and the industry's response to the economic imperatives that it faced. Commercialization and industrialization, often associated with the gradual growth of wage labour and movement of textile production away from the household, had significant implications for the gender identity of textile work, but this process was far from being always the same in different countries and regions.
