ABSTRACT
This chapter details the profiles of the work history of three working-class women during the inter-war years as an introduction to the main structural features of women’s employment at that time. Doris Sharland, Kath Parish and Edith Boyd were three young working-class women with very varied experiences of work in the inter-war years. Doris Sharland comes from Kilburn in north-west London. It was a photographic equipment factory and Doris’s job was to pack glass plates in thick paper and cardboard, working completely in the dark, for 12s a week. Unlike Doris Sharland, Kath Parish stayed in the same job from the time she left school until she married. She comes from Coventry where there was a tradition of industrial employment for women. Edith Boyd was born in 1911 and lived in South Shields in the North East of England, an area that was very hard hit by the economic depression.
