ABSTRACT
The support given gender specific protective labour laws by the Webbs reflects their conviction that the immediate needs of the women of the industrial working class had to be given priority where these needs conflicted with the rights of employers and the needs of more affluent women. It was held that these basic labour laws were a critical resource providing a legal foundation upon which those working women with least resources could build effective instruments of resistance to male and class oppression. As has been shown, this perspective elicited a great deal of hostility from that faction of the women's movement which saw the laws as analogous to the discriminatory barriers they faced within their own fields and who claimed gender specific labour laws which protected working class women were opposed to women's interests.
