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Book Review
| Barbara Brookes, Annabel Cooper and Robin Law (eds), Sites of Gender: Women, Men and Modernity in Southern Dunedin 1890–1939, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 2003. pp. xiii + 434, NZ $44.95 paper.
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| The southern suburbs of Dunedin, a predominantly working-class area with some wealthier pockets, underwent some dramatic changes in the years between 1890 and 1939. Urbanisation and industrialisation, the engines of modernity, brought new ideas about the role of the State and its relations with citizens, and also ushered in new ideas about how members of the community should behave towards one another. Modernity questioned traditional notions of childhood, of race, and, principally as far as the authors of this volume are concerned, of gender and how men and women should relate. Although unexceptional in their own right, these southern Dunedin suburbs felt, at a local level, the global phenomenon of modernity and are a suitable microcosm of broader experiences. |
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What does make these suburbs exceptional for the historian is the access we have to them through the 'Caversham Project'. Initially a study of social and geographical mobility, in the borough of Caversham, the project developed, over a quarter of a century, into a much wider-ranging study drawing on 'the largest social history database in Australia' (p. vii). Supplemented by the addition of oral history and expansion of the database to encompass a longer time period and boroughs neighbouring Caversham, the result is clearly a wealth of recollections and vast quantitative resource pool that most social historians would drool over. |
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The possibilities for using such a database are vast. The editors of this volume have used it to examine gender, selecting a range of 'sites' where men and women contested for access and control in some cases, or simply where they experienced the transformations wrought by modernity in different, gender-specific ways. There are a number of possible sites that are overlooked, such as war, old age and political power to name but a few, but the 'sites' chosen nonetheless cover an impressive range of life experiences and situations. Introductory chapters explore the importance of and pre-existing literature on gender and situate the book nicely by outlining the history of the southern suburbs of Dunedin. Various 'sites' examined thereafter include work, education, leisure, clothing, poverty, mobility, transport, health, religion and marriage. |
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The insights generated are manifold, but perhaps the most intriguing overall aspect that of the studies is how much better women seem to have done out of the process of modernisation than men. If the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can be seen as a time of 'gender wars', as they frequently are, then in southern Dunedin at least, women won hands down. |
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Even in the least expected area of work, for example, women made significant gains despite them not overthrowing masculine dominance. For men there were gains in that the ideal of the male breadwinner was increasingly enshrined through practices such as minimum wage rates that assumed the need to provide for dependants and through an informal marriage bar that saw most women leave the workforce upon marriage, and in that work became gradually less dangerous and better paid over the period. But most men still handed their pay packets over to their wives, male and female pay differentials were gradually reduced, women found innumerable ways to supplement the family income, and there were new opportunities in, for example, the beauty industry. |
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Education also became increasingly egalitarian, with fewer and fewer distinctions being drawn on the basis of class and gender as the State adopted liberal education ideologies and offered liberal education provision. In terms of dress, men and women were both increasingly freed from the dictates of Victorian formality — but women rather more so. Similarly in leisure, opportunities expanded for both men and women, but the rise in women's leisure was more notable, connecting with dress in defining the 'new woman' — a radically new gender construct that had no male equivalent. |
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The most dramatic gain made by women was probably in the area health. True, the new obsession with an antiseptic household placed much greater demands on women in terms of maintaining a clean environment, but the introduction of antibiotics, smaller families and greatly improved healthcare systems made life much less dangerous for women than it had been. Men, meanwhile, continued to suffer disproportionately from violent deaths at work and at play, and had to endure the catastrophic experience of war. |
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Modernity did not bring gifts for all women, some of whom still found themselves in terrible situations. Mary Mace, widowed at 32 years of age with 7 children aged between 7 months and 15 years, is one of a number of victims who appear throughout the book, as is Emmeline Gallaway, murdered by her frustrated husband on the first day of the twentieth century. But by and large, women, through subtle negotiation, moral evangelicalism and State action, amongst other methods, were able to advance the causes of their gender rather more so than men. |
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This is an exquisite piece of social history. If it has a failing it is that too many of the subjects lack a human face, being reduced to cohorts, numbers and percentages. One might also quibble with the writing, which at times lacks passion and colour, and which on occasion has the appearance of being excessively earnest. These are, however, minor faults in what should, by rights, be regarded as a landmark study, not just of southern Dunedin, not just of New Zealand, but of gender and modernity. |
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| University of Queensland |
MARTIN CROTTY | |
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