Men and monotony fraternalism as a managerial strategy at the ford motor company

Until very recently, the shop floor of America's leading automobile manufacturers, and the unions that bargained for those who worked there, were the domain of men. For example, throughout the interwar period, the level of female employment in production departments hovered around 1 percent at the Ford Motor Company. At its massive River Rouge complex outside of Detroit, Ford employed over 70, 000 men but not one woman in a production department in the early 1940s. This chapter examines why this was the case.