ABSTRACT
Certain outstanding features of the women recruited to assembly work in the inter-war period can be seen as effects of the specific conditions under which women sold their labour power at that time. First, the age structure of the assembly labour force was an effect of the discontinuous availability of the women throughout the life cycle. Second, much of the supply of women for assembly work was drawn from sources that had become newly available for wage labour. Third, the regional location of certain of the new industries in the Midlands and South East, especially in areas where there had previously been little industrial employment for women meant that women entered factory work with no tradition of industrial experience or of trade union organization. Fourth, women from Wales, Scotland, the North East and other ‘distressed’ regions who could not find work in their home area migrated towards the new centres of industrial employment.
