Preliminary Programme

Wed 12 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 13 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Fri 14 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Sat 15 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00

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Thursday 13 April 2023 08.30 - 10.30
P-5 MAT02 Consumer Decisions: Professional Women’s Advice on Energy Transitions, 1870-1965.
E44
Network: Material and Consumer Culture Chair: Graeme Gooday
Organizers: Abigail Harrison Moore, Ruth Sandwell Discussant: Graeme Gooday
Jan Hadlaw : A ‘Hello Girl’ with a ‘Big Dial’: Gender, Automation Anxiety, and Displays of Technological Expertise in Interwar Telephony
When, in the early 1920s, the Bell Telephone Company of Canada made the decision to introduce automatic dial service in central Canada’s big cities, it recognized that the success of its plans rested almost completely with telephone users. Accustomed to the ‘personalized service’ that operators provided with manual telephony, few ... (Show more)
When, in the early 1920s, the Bell Telephone Company of Canada made the decision to introduce automatic dial service in central Canada’s big cities, it recognized that the success of its plans rested almost completely with telephone users. Accustomed to the ‘personalized service’ that operators provided with manual telephony, few subscribers saw the change to dial service as a positive development. Most were skeptical of Bell’s motivations, and viewed dial service as a way for Bell to eliminate its large workforce of young female operators by having subscribers do their work. Anxious to insure a smooth transition to the new system, Bell implemented a year-long comprehensive subscriber education campaign intended to overcome subscribers’ mistrust and their resistance to change.
This paper examines the important role that Bell’s telephone operators played in the subscriber education campaign, especially by running ‘how-to-dial’ demonstrations in workplaces, clubs, schools, and in Bell’s own business offices. A ‘hello girl’ with a ‘big (demonstrator) dial’ became a common sight in major Canadian cities during the 1920s. The technical knowledge and customer relations skills that operators had developed working on the switchboards made them experts in their own right, ideally suited to the job of teaching the public how to dial, while their youth, gender, and amiable demeanour put audiences at ease and made dial telephone technology appear easy to master. For telephone users accustomed to operated-assisted telephone service, demonstrations led by the ‘hello girls’ also offered a form of interaction reassuringly similar to their experiences and expectations of telephone service. Furthermore, operator-led demonstrations promoted the impression that operators themselves looked forward to the new dial system, thereby dampening public anxiety about the replacement of skilled young women by automated technology. Ultimately, women’s expertise in customer relations was used to facilitate and normalize what amounted to a significant technological de-skilling of their role in the telephone industry.

This paper has been developed as part of the proposed session for Material and Consumer Culture on ‘Consumer Decisions: Professional Women’s Advice on Energy Transitions, 1870-1965’. The session will be chaired by Professor Graeme Gooday (University of Leeds, UK) who will also act as discussant, and features papers proposed by Profs Harrison Moore, Sandwell, Hadlaw and Dr Tailford. This proposed session will consider the histories and influence of women in energy history as they began to assume professional roles, as decorators, engineers, demonstrators and educators, in order to influence decisions about supply, use and fittings, concomitantly as women were increasingly taking on the role as chief consumers for the home. (Show less)

Jan Hadlaw : A ‘Hello Girl’ with a ‘Big Dial’: Gender, Automation Anxiety, and Displays of Technological Expertise in Interwar Telephony
When, in the early 1920s, the Bell Telephone Company of Canada made the decision to introduce automatic dial service in central Canada’s big cities, it recognized that the success of its plans rested almost completely with telephone users. Accustomed to the ‘personalized service’ that operators provided with manual telephony, few ... (Show more)
When, in the early 1920s, the Bell Telephone Company of Canada made the decision to introduce automatic dial service in central Canada’s big cities, it recognized that the success of its plans rested almost completely with telephone users. Accustomed to the ‘personalized service’ that operators provided with manual telephony, few subscribers saw the change to dial service as a positive development. Most were skeptical of Bell’s motivations, and viewed dial service as a way for Bell to eliminate its large workforce of young female operators by having subscribers do their work. Anxious to insure a smooth transition to the new system, Bell implemented a year-long comprehensive subscriber education campaign intended to overcome subscribers’ mistrust and their resistance to change.
This paper examines the important role that Bell’s telephone operators played in the subscriber education campaign, especially by running ‘how-to-dial’ demonstrations in workplaces, clubs, schools, and in Bell’s own business offices. A ‘hello girl’ with a ‘big (demonstrator) dial’ became a common sight in major Canadian cities during the 1920s. The technical knowledge and customer relations skills that operators had developed working on the switchboards made them experts in their own right, ideally suited to the job of teaching the public how to dial, while their youth, gender, and amiable demeanour put audiences at ease and made dial telephone technology appear easy to master. For telephone users accustomed to operated-assisted telephone service, demonstrations led by the ‘hello girls’ also offered a form of interaction reassuringly similar to their experiences and expectations of telephone service. Furthermore, operator-led demonstrations promoted the impression that operators themselves looked forward to the new dial system, thereby dampening public anxiety about the replacement of skilled young women by automated technology. Ultimately, women’s expertise in customer relations was used to facilitate and normalize what amounted to a significant technological de-skilling of their role in the telephone industry.

This paper has been developed as part of the proposed session for Material and Consumer Culture on ‘Consumer Decisions: Professional Women’s Advice on Energy Transitions, 1870-1965’. The session will be chaired by Professor Graeme Gooday (University of Leeds, UK) who will also act as discussant, and features papers proposed by Profs Harrison Moore, Sandwell, Hadlaw and Dr Tailford. This proposed session will consider the histories and influence of women in energy history as they began to assume professional roles, as decorators, engineers, demonstrators and educators, in order to influence decisions about supply, use and fittings, concomitantly as women were increasingly taking on the role as chief consumers for the home. (Show less)

Abigail Harrison Moore : ‘Lady Experts’ and Housewives. Mediation, Women and Energy Transitions
In 1877, cousins Agnes and Rhoda Garrett, creators of the first all-female design and decorating company in Britain, published Suggestions for House Decoration in which they spoke directly to the ‘ladies of the family’, in their attempt to subvert the patriarchy of the household. Likewise, Mrs Mary Eliza Haweis’ The ... (Show more)
In 1877, cousins Agnes and Rhoda Garrett, creators of the first all-female design and decorating company in Britain, published Suggestions for House Decoration in which they spoke directly to the ‘ladies of the family’, in their attempt to subvert the patriarchy of the household. Likewise, Mrs Mary Eliza Haweis’ The Art of Decoration (1881), which includes one of the earliest print recommendations for the use of electricity to light the home, urged her women readers to exercise their own rights. The women in my chosen case studies of advice-givers, had two different and opposing messages for their customers/readers. On the one hand, as professional decorators and guides they were relying on the insecurities, fear and ignorance of women consumers in making their own decorating decisions in the 1870s and 80s when the transition to gas and electricity became a possibility in the home. On the other hand, they were also explicitly claiming that such decision-making empowered their women clients. While their guidebooks exhorted women to see home decoration as an enfranchising activity, aligning this work with the politics of suffrage, they also utilised a woman’s need for guidance as a way of opening up a client base and building their business. Rather than framing these professional guides as being either about denigration and control on the one hand, or empowerment on the other, I want to suggest a new way of understanding how women worked with each other through times of energy transition and change. What happens if we see the role of women advising women using ideas of respect, care, morality and mediation? And how does viewing the house-wife as energy consumer empower her in history and historiography? How does this change the story and what can we learn from this for the energy transition to a post carbon future ahead of us?
This paper has been developed as part of the proposed session for Material and Consumer Culture on ‘Consumer Decisions: Professional Women’s Advice on Energy Transitions, 1870-1965’. The session will be chaired by Professor Graeme Gooday (University of Leeds, UK) who will also act as discussant, and features papers proposed by Profs Harrison Moore, Sandwell, Hadlaw and Dr Tailford. This proposed session will consider the histories and influence of women in energy history as they began to assume professional roles, as decorators, engineers, demonstrators and educators, in order to influence decisions about supply, use and fittings, concomitantly as women were increasingly taking on the role as chief consumers for the home. (Show less)

Ruth Sandwell : Energy Consumption Professionals: the Role of Home Economists in the Transition to Fossil Fuels
This paper focuses in on one aspect of Canadians’ great energy transformation from the organic to the mineral energy regime: the remarkable public (re)education campaign directed at Canadian homemakers. From the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, homemakers became the targets of an unprecedented, sustained and ... (Show more)
This paper focuses in on one aspect of Canadians’ great energy transformation from the organic to the mineral energy regime: the remarkable public (re)education campaign directed at Canadian homemakers. From the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, homemakers became the targets of an unprecedented, sustained and multi-faceted re-educational campaign directed at changing their energy-related behaviours in the home. For the first time in history, the ways that women cooked, cleaned, lighted and heated their homes became the subject of considerable interest across the nation and beyond. In response, an alliance of professional women, advertisers and the electrical industry, of many levels of government, of “manufacturers and mass circulation media, and a range of reformers interested in improving women’s lives actively participated in a massive re-education movement. This paper re-evaluates the role of home economics and domestic science professionals as handmaidens of the transition to modern energy consumption. It explores the nature and extent of this remarkable campaign, gauges professional women’s motivations and accomplishments, and concludes by summarizing why, as the statistical evidence confirms, the first two generations of women exposed to this campaign remained so sceptical of its claims.
This paper has been developed as part of the proposed session for Material and Consumer Culture on ‘Consumer Decisions: Professional Women’s Advice on Energy Transitions, 1870-1965’. The session will be chaired by Professor Graeme Gooday (University of Leeds, UK) who will also act as discussant, and features papers proposed by Profs Harrison Moore, Sandwell, Hadlaw and Dr Tailford. This proposed session will consider the histories and influence of women in energy history as they began to assume professional roles, as decorators, engineers, demonstrators and educators, in order to influence decisions about supply, use and fittings, concomitantly as women were increasingly taking on the role as chief consumers for the home. (Show less)

Cameron Tailford, Graeme Gooday : Women as Consumers of Inter-war Radio
This paper explores how women’s role as consumers of radio hardware developed in the interwar period in ways that complement Maggie Andrews work in Domesticating the Airwaves. The first key question that I address is: how and why did middle-class housewives become the key consumer base of inter-war radio technology ... (Show more)
This paper explores how women’s role as consumers of radio hardware developed in the interwar period in ways that complement Maggie Andrews work in Domesticating the Airwaves. The first key question that I address is: how and why did middle-class housewives become the key consumer base of inter-war radio technology and how did this shape the presentation of the technology? My second question is: to what extent and in what new ways did working-class women come into contact with radio technology in the interwar years? Roger Horowitz and Arwen Mohun emphasise in His and Hers (1998) that ‘stereotypes of women as passive consumers and men as producers’ have been historically constructed on marketing that is heavily based on gendered assumptions in relation to taste, expertise, capability and interest. The rise of household radio consumption and its associated technologies fit this widespread trend: even though new electronic technology was almost entirely constructed in factories by working-class women, early devotees of the wireless and its capabilities were almost entirely male. I examine the inter-war years as transitional period in which women emerged as the most important purchasers and consumers of radio hardware, deciding where the technology was listened to, how it was consumed and even influencing what was broadcast. A principal source of evidence is the hobbyist periodical literature of the interwar years. By the 1920s such magazines were placing radio hardware in settings depicting a middle-class home with entire families listening to the radio rather than representing the technology as the singular domain of the male tinkerer. Popular Wireless Weekly enables us to explore the interwar transition of radio technology from the ‘masculine’ world to the ‘feminine’.

This paper has been developed as part of the proposed session for Material and Consumer Culture on ‘Consumer Decisions: Professional Women’s Advice on Energy Transitions, 1870-1965’. The session will be chaired by Professor Graeme Gooday (University of Leeds, UK) who will also act as discussant, and features papers proposed by Profs Harrison Moore, Sandwell, Hadlaw and Dr Tailford. This proposed session will consider the histories and influence of women in energy history as they began to assume professional roles, as decorators, engineers, demonstrators and educators, in order to influence decisions about supply, use and fittings, concomitantly as women were increasingly taking on the role as chief consumers for the home. (Show less)



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