Women Workers and Rationalising of Labour in Industrial Biscuit Factories in France Before 1940

This paper looks at the relationship between feminisation and industrialisation by focusing on a sector that was feminising while maintaining a significant proportion of men: the industrial biscuit factories that developed in France from the 1870s onwards. From a standpoint of the social history of work, we examine the tasks assigned to women in these new factories, and look at gender as an organisational category in the mechanisation of production. Women occupied a subordinate position in the hierarchy of skills and pay, but were key to the processes of industrial rationalisation. A study of horizontal segregation shows that women were not only employed in packaging and glazing, while an analysis of vertical segregation reveals limited opportunities for promotion. The paper describes one engineer’s actions to “Taylorise” a biscuit factory by implementing a collective work rhythm based on a scientific approach.