Simone Weil and Women Workers in the 1930s: Simone Weil and Women Workers in the 1930s: Condition ouvrière and Condition féminine: Condition ouvrière and Condition féminine

Publication Type

Journal Article

Year of Publication

1996

Author

Reynolds, Siân

Journal

Cahiers Simone Weil

Volume

19

Number

1

Pages

97-113

Language

English

Keywords

work (factory)
gender

Annotation

Reynolds looks at the question of gender as it arises in Weil's writings collected in La Condition ouvrière, something she claims has been neglected in the scholarship on this work. Reynolds focuses on one aspect of this question 'women workers as perceived and analyzed in the text'. She sets her discussion within the context of "Simone Weil's view of herself as a woman and the nature of women’s factory work in the 1930's". Ultimately Reynolds' argues, Weil's experience was gendered as there were significant differences between men’s and women’s factory experience. This gendered nature of her experience gets lost in the scholarship, partially through Weil's own concealment of gender in her writings that draw on her factory journals; journals which clearly note gender differences in the factory work. This apparently deliberate concealment goes unnoticed or at least unremarked upon by later writers leading to a number of important issues upon which Reynolds reflects in her concluding comments