Gendered work and workers

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This paper focuses on the process of differentiation related to work and workforces in the period of modernization, namely, the process of gendering in a comparative perspective between Germany and Japan.Dealing with the work, I analysed the weaving industry in the home industry period and its transition to mechanized factory production. Even the same kind of work is defined differently or given another meaning, depending on which gender does the work. The work takes on a gendered character and its social value is thereby affected. The same kind of work has different social status for the male workforce and female workforce. In Germany there were many attempts to heighten the status of this work. Mainly men carried out the German weaving industry, and in spite of the home weavers were just wageworkers, but their work forms were assimilated to those of craftsmen. There were many attempts to exclude women from master status. Male weavers thought of mechanization as degrading to their professional qualification and they resisted it and the feminization of this industry. In Japan, with the exception of some special kind of products woven by highly skilled and long-term-qualified craftsmen, weaving was seen as a female business. Even though there were expert female weavers who earned most of the family income, they were not perceived as established professionals, but appreciated as good wives.As for the workforces, the introduction of the social insurance system in Germany at the end of the 19th century contributed to fix the breadwinner model, and thereafter men were regarded as normal workers and women as special.