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Beards and Bloomers: Flight Attendants, Grievances and Embodied Labour in the Canadian Airline Industry, 1960s–1980s

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  • Joan Sangster
  • Julia Smith

Abstract

type="main"> This paper examines union grievances dealing with the body, appearance and demeanour fought by the Canadian Air Line Flight Attendants Association, on behalf of its female and male members over a 30-year period. Taking a historical, materialist-feminist approach, we examine how workers used the grievance system to resist regulations they believed contradicted their right to dignified labour. We ask how and why bodily regulation differed for men and women, and how this changed over time, as the union merged its male and female job occupations. Using arbitrated grievances, union records and discussion of these issues in the mass media, we show how both feminism and service union activism encouraged flight attendant resistance to airlines’ efforts to regulate the appropriate body and attire for male and female workers. The use of labour law offered workers some respite from regulation, but did not facilitate fundamental questions about the power of management to ‘dress’ its workers.

Suggested Citation

  • Joan Sangster & Julia Smith, 2016. "Beards and Bloomers: Flight Attendants, Grievances and Embodied Labour in the Canadian Airline Industry, 1960s–1980s," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(2), pages 183-199, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:gender:v:23:y:2016:i:2:p:183-199
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/gwao.12120
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Chris Warhurst & DENNIS NICKSON & ANNE WITZ & ANNE MARIE CULLEN, 2000. "Aesthetic Labour in Interactive Service Work: Some Case Study Evidence from the ‘New’ Glasgow," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(3), pages 1-18, July.
    2. Sharon C. Bolton & Carol Boyd, 2003. "Trolley Dolly or Skilled Emotion Manager? Moving on from Hochschild's Managed Heart," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 17(2), pages 289-308, June.
    3. Maria Adamson, 2014. "Reflexivity and the Construction of Competing Discourses of Masculinity in a Female-Dominated Profession," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(6), pages 559-572, November.
    4. Boris, Eileen, 2006. "Desirable Dress: Rosies, Sky Girls, and the Politics of Appearance," International Labor and Working-Class History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 69(1), pages 123-142, March.
    5. Steve Taylor & Melissa Tyler, 2000. "Emotional Labour and Sexual Difference in the Airline Industry," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 14(1), pages 77-95, March.
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    1. Quach, Sara & Jebarajakirthy, Charles & Thaichon, Park, 2017. "Aesthetic labor and visible diversity: The role in retailing service encounters," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 34-43.

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