Regina Wecker, Brigitte Studer, and Gaby Sutter, eds., Die "Schutzbedurftigte Frau": Zur Konstruktion von Geschlecht durch Mutterschaftsversicherung, Nachtarbeitsverbot und Sonderschutzgesetzgebung.

Schade, Rosemarie

Regina Wecker, Brigitte Studer, and Gaby Sutter, eds., Die "Schutzbedurftigte Frau": Zur Konstruktion von Geschlecht durch Mutterschaftsversicherung, Nachtarbeitsverbot und Sonderschutzgesetzgebung. (Zurich: Chronos Verlag 2001)

THIS BOOK is the first to fully document the debates and practices surrounding issues of gender and work in Switzerland from the final third of the 19th century into the near present. It admirably fulfills the aim of exploring the mutually interdependent development of gendered labour legislation within the structures and contexts of larger societal discourses. The research was financed through a government grant designed to shed light on issues of male and female equality and the social significance of gender in Switzerland, and explains the sensitivity of the authors to the Swiss debates of the early 1990s around issues of work, protective legislation, and compensation for maternity. Drawing on both the historical and contemporaneous debates, the authors demonstrate the continuity of the unwillingness of Swiss lawmakers to deal comprehensively with the securing of compensation and the improvement of conditions for working mothers as late as 2000, when the book went to press, an unwillingness that was based on often contradictory gender "norms" which developed historically.

The book is arranged largely chronologically, with the editors each taking responsibility for one or more chapters. Wecker provides a sophisticated theoretical framework in the beginning of the book, inspired in no small part by the work of Judith Butler and the idea of "doing gender" to explain the processes of interaction that have "naturalized" gender difference and its manifold social consequences.

One of the most interesting findings in the book was the initial peculiarity of 19th-century Swiss labour legislation when compared to similar western European legislation. Swiss labour legislation tended to deal with the regulation of male and female workers at the same time. Rarely did such legislation involve special amendments intended to protect women specifically. In the 20th century, this peculiarity of Swiss labour legislation began to fade, as both in practice and in newer legislation women workers were specifically targeted with restrictions on their freedom to choose certain types of labour, such as night work or work with toxic chemicals. Earlier legislation had already stipulated a period of absence from work during pregnancy and childbirth. This specifically female role became the basis for later forms of protective legislation. Missing from these forms of protective legislation, however, was monetary compensation for women while they were off work for this reason. The contradiction between increased "protection" of women without concomitant fiscal recompense either in the area of maternity benefits or in other ways (such as setting up school cafeterias) forms a major theme for the book. This general pattern excluded women from certain types of (usually better paid) work in order to protect their reproductive capacities, but no serious attempts were made to compensate them for lost earnings.

In some aspects of labour legislation and attitudes towards working women, the Swiss case fits neatly with situations experienced in other European countries. Modernizing and rationalizing in rapidly developing white-collar work such as telegraph and office work meant that in areas where men (and sometimes men and women) had once worked for reasonable remuneration, the influx of women changed the perception and pay scale of the work involved. Legislation limiting women's work tended to extend over time from proscriptions such as handling toxic chemicals during pregnancy to proscriptions to any women working with such chemicals. As Wecker remarks, (244) arguments about protecting unborn children or reproductive capacities were only used for women. Men working with dangerous chemicals were protected through legislation as workers, whereas women were excluded from certain work not as workers but for reasons of gender. In the final analysis, the discourse around protective legislation for women was part of a process that created and consolidated gender roles, gender differences, and gender hierarchies.

The authors were all careful to use a variety of sources to support the narrative structure of the book, including numerous archival materials, legal documents, government publications, legislation, newspapers, and magazines. The trilingual bibliography of secondary literature is impressively thorough and international in scope, thus demonstrating an in-depth appreciation of German and American debates on gender theory and past and present debates on "women's work" by the participants in this book.

It is unfortunate that there is at present no English translation of this book, as its findings are likely to resonate with issues of gendered work appearing in the Canadian context. The book will be an important resource for anyone interested in European women's and labour history.

Rosemarie Schade

Concordia University