The Afrikaner Women Of The Garment Workers Union, 1918-1939

Abstract

This dissertation examines the w o r king and family lives of the Afrikaner women who were members of the Garment Workers' union of the Transvaal between 1918 and 1939. It assesses the extent to w h . z h the garment workers, as working women, contributed to the shaping of South African society during this period. Through an examination of archival sources and an extensive number of interviews, the circumstances in which they engaged in industrial labour when other strategies for survival of the family as an wife - earn m g unit failed, were determined. Within rapidly changing community and family relationships these Afrikaner women became major breadwinners in the family. As a result they were often denigrated by society, but emerged as women who asserted their own respectability, dignity and sense of worth within the factory, union, community and family.