ILPC 2027

The Polish emigre and careful observer of the British working classes, Ferdynand Zweig (1961) argued that ' (the) working-class life finds itself on the move towards new middle-class values and middle-class existence, the change can only be described as a deep transformation of values, as the development of new ways of thinking and feeling, a new ethos, new aspirations and cravings."

Indeed, from the 1950s onwards, the nature of the working classes and their identity became more complex, in particular for those women who had to negotiate new identities as both working class and as working women. Women’s identity began to emerge from the household and work not only became the province of women as well as men but started to become a significant factor in the definition of women’s identity. Gender also became a primary means of articulating changes in class identity from the 1950s. Despite the progress that women made during this period in terms of both their position in the labour market and their opportunities for social advancement, they were still at the mercy of men, particularly in terms of the architecture of work. Whilst Braverman (1974) argued that the working classes were being deskilled by the middle classes who owned the knowledge about technology, in parallel, women were increasingly expected to be the operators of the technology designed by men (Cockburn, 1985).

The present paper examines the identity of 24 of lower middle class/ upper working class women working as telephonists within the Operator Services department of the General Post Office (GPO)/British  Telecom between the 1950s and 1970s. The data collection utilised a working-life biography approach, which provided a long-run perspective on occupational identity and transitions between different phases of the life course. This retrospective approach encouraged reflexive thought and abstraction from the discussion of daily routines or events - the recall of which illustrated broader changes in the lived experience of the workplace. The paper explores the interrelation of occupational identity with class-based and gender-based identity, and this is shaped by the experience of work. The technical nature of work informed the basis of a strong occupational identity, which over-lapped with an organisational identity and attachment to the GPO, yet which also intersected with gender issues in terms of the nature of the technology the women utilised. In turn, the occupational and organisational identity intersected with class-based identity associated with the status of their work as GPO Telephonists in the wider community. Such work provided the basis for both social and geographic mobility, which again intersected with both class based and gender identities. There is a wealth of research indicating the ‘enthusiasm’, attachment and nostalgia that retired male telecoms engineers have in relation to their earlier employment (Geoghegan, 2012) in addition to evidence about the relationship between identity and technology (MacKenzie et al., 2016). However, there is no research focussing on the equivalent experiences and reflections of women during this era. This paper seeks to go some way to addressing this gap in the debate.