WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES - A THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL EXPLORATION OF TEMPORALITY AND GENDER

This paper explores the potentialities and distinctiveness of a tempor al perspective for analysing differences between and within genders. A fter a brief overview of sociological approaches to time, it suggests the value of 'an economy of time' framework for analysing work, especi ally those forms which involve no monetary exchange. Exchanges of time can be seen to establish their own reciprocities, inequalities and hi erarchies, thus forming a wider basis for the analysis of social and g ender division than one resting on a more narrow, say monetary, econom ic premise. The central sections attempt to demonstrate these points u sing oral history research on married women who began work in Lancashi re during the inter-war years. Weavers and casual women workers are co ntrasted with respect to three dimensions of temporality: (1) the temp oral structure of work/time in waged work, domestic labour and leisure , and exchanges of time between themselves and their husbands, employe rs and each other; (2) the temporality of life-course events and the s tructure of memory; and (3) the division between public and private. I argue that the findings (that the two groups differed systematically on all dimensions both in their use and subjective-experience of time) have contemporary and conceptual implications extending beyond the pa rticular case study, including a reconceptualisation of 'standard' wor king time and what constitutes 'economy'.