Wives of Steel: Voices of Women from the Sparrows Point Steelmaking Communities

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Description

During its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, the Bethlehem Steel mill at Sparrows Point near Baltimore used to be one of the vital world’s largest steel plants, employing as many as 30,000 workers. But these glory years were short-lived, as the American steel industry soon collapsed, taking with it the high-income industrial jobs that many Sparrows Point workers had come to enjoy. This familiar tale of decline in The united states’s industrial heartland is only a part of the story, alternatively. In response to downsizing and job loss at Sparrows Point, many women entered the group of workers to fulfill the needs of their families living in the adjacent communities of Turners Station and Dundalk. Wives of Steel tells the story of these women who broke traditional gender roles and, in the process, contributed to the economic survival of their communities.

Wives of Steel is based on more than eighty formal interviews conducted over a fifteen-year period with women and a few men, both white and black, all of whom were a part of Sparrows Point as workers, spouses, or longtime residents of the local communities. Through the stories they tell, we see how a male-dominated industry has influenced personal, circle of relatives, and social experiences over several generations. We also see the distinct differences and surprising similarities between the lives of black and white women, which continuously reflect the complicated relationships among black and white steelworkers in the plant.

Deindustrialization has transformed many of The united states’s cities and communities, continuously in devastating ways. For women in particular, the changes in circle of relatives and work life have been far more complex and in many ways more positive in their consequences than many studies have led us to expect. Combining consummate research with vivid firsthand accounts, Wives of Steel tells a story that continues to be played out in communities across The united states as working-class families are forced to deal with a globalizing economy.

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