Women Workers in the Toronto Printing Trades: 1880-1900

Historians who have documented the history of the printing trades in Canada, Britain and the United States have tended to concentrate on male workers and employers, and on male dominated unions. The role of women workers is often mentioned only in relation to how they were used to undercut the wages and status of journeymen printers. In this respect, women workers are relegated to the shadows of printing history. Printing is a trade in which women have participated from its inception, and yet their involvement has remained largely ignored by historians.

This study was undertaken to redress this imbalance in the history of the Canadian printing trades. Through an examination of statistical and narrative sources of information from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is possible to get a sense of where, and in what capacity, women workers were employed in the Canadian printing trades. Contemporary attitudes towards issues relating to women and work affected the compilation and presentation of this information, and thus an analysis of social and economic contextual material is crucial for enhancing the interpretation of data. The economic and social conditions prevalent in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Toronto provide a context within which to situate the study of women printing workers of that city detailed in the final chapter.

This study represents an interdisciplinary approach to the documentation of the involvement of women in the Toronto printing trades of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It adds to the literature of Canadian printing history as well as to the literature of women's history and to the history of working people in general. The research undertaken for this dissertation affirms the place of women in printing history and offers some insight into the lives of specific women workers in the Toronto printing trades.