ABSTRACT
Women moved into retailing, as in banking, in the 1950s: by 1974 they constituted 80 per cent of union membership. Retailing in its modern form emerged with the rise to prominence of the department stores in the 1880s. Employers were always keen to take on more women: the first half of this century saw a running battle between employers wanting to extend the number of departments in which women could work and male-dominated unions trying to preserve their male members’ wages and working conditions by restricting them. The consumption boom meant, to state the obvious, that there were a lot more things for people to buy: clothing and processed foods, whitegoods and electrical appliances. Changes in the organisation of work and in the composition of the workforce have been predicated on gender division and hierarchy. The fast food firms have broken up the labour process to an extent we would not have thought possible a few years ago.
