This article regards the problem of defining the women’s status in the sugar-refining industry of the Russia Empire post-reform period. Based on the cases of sugar factories of Kyiv province during the 1880s–1905s, the author illustrates a complicated process of determining the role and the place of female laborers in the professional structure of industrial institutions which relate to this type of industry. Due to the fact that women had been recruited to unqualified parts of the working class (in the majority of cases), they remained at the bottom of the hierarchy of industrial labor. In contrast to men-laborers, who were distributed by the qualification parameter and professional skill (qualified/unqualified labor force), women-laborers were distributed by the gender parameter.
Based on the archival materials of the factory inspection funds and in-factory documentation, it was found that working women were most often identified into the category “women” (“zhenschina”), less often as “part-time workers” (“polurabochaya”), and even less often as “workers” (“rabochaya”). It is possible to say that such division differed significantly from the distribution among the male part of the working class (“rabochiy/polurabo- chiy”). After all, a woman working in an industrial space was generally perceived not as a full-fledged unit of labor but as a supplement to qualified male labor. However, the model proposed by the author of this study: “woman” – “semi-worker” – “worker”, opened a different angle, according to which a woman’s professional position was not clearly fixed and could de facto change, regardless of the type of the performed work (qualified or unqualified). As a result, all these sources and evidence allow us to state that the period of industrialization and modernization provided for women (though not significant) a space for opportunities to realize their own work.
Women's Status: Not a Soft Challenge
