Shopgirls Dialectical Journal

In Shopgirls - The True Story of Life Behind the Counter, Dr. Pamela Cox described the history of shop girls during the mid-nineteenth century. She explored the hardships of women in entering a job that men dominated and the public perceived as glamorous. In The Daily Chronicle, Margaret Bondfield exposed the real life of shop girls in the “Life in the Shop” in 1898 when she illustrated their actual living and working conditions. Moreover, Bondfield joined and promoted the union to fellow shop assistants. Together with politically active peers, they shaped labor law in their favor. Some of their most important contributions were the minimum wage and shorter work hours with breaks. Social standards and work opportunities affected people, especially …show more content…
First, paid work shaped people’s views of shopping as their purchasing power increased. Shopping represented economic and social progress (Shopgirls). Second, women entered the workforce at higher numbers, particularly during the war when they had to take men’s jobs (Shopgirls). As a result, they increase their social and economic autonomy as they earned and spent their money as they pleased. Physically, women became more daring as well, serving in physically-demanding jobs, including sports, like soccer (Shopgirls). Believing that they are equals of men, women also engaged in fighting for improved civil rights, particularly suffrage (Shopgirls). In short, work opened a new way of thinking, living, and acting that empowered once-marginalized …show more content…
If at first they wore the traditional female dress as shop assistants, they soon also donned male clothing that affected their perspectives. Dressing as men in their traditional job positions, women felt power that was denied to them because of their gender (Shopgirls). As “men,” women realized that they could be powerful as the former and fought for, as well as gained, equal rights and treatment. A true story of struggle from being a servant to a laborer with worker and civil rights, Shopgirls reveals the transformation of retail life and the resolution of gender inequality issues. Shop girls fought for recognition as equal assistants, and soon, as equal human beings. Selling to consumers became their stepping stone to better work and improved life conditions in general. Hence, through collective bargaining, shop girls significantly shaped both retail work conditions and social life in