Same or Different: Gender Politics in the Workplace

First published in 1999, this volume responds to the 1968 sewing worker strikes at the Ford Motor Company, asking how the worker demands made by women are to be heard and understood in workplace negotiations. At the time of original writing in the late 1990s, there remained many women workers whose needs and concerns remained hidden behind a workplace agenda dominated by male interests. Kay M. Fraser utilises some of the insights offered by post-structuralist feminist theorists to interrogate the competing debates about women workers as they were discursively constructed by the organisations, institutions and individuals interested and involved in the employment of women during the 1960s. Fraser further explores notions of sameness and difference, how these were used to formulate a view of women workers and highlights the need for women to be seen, particularly by those involved in the workplace negotiations of the future, as both the same as and different from men workers.