Factory girls

King-Campbell, Sharon (2019) Factory girls. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

In 1916, a representative from the Imperial Munitions Board announced to a gathering of women at Massey Hall in downtown Toronto that women were to be recruited to munitions factories. The intention from the Board and from the Canadian government was to dilute the masculine labour force with unskilled female labourers in order to allow the largest possible number of able-bodied men to enlist for deployment overseas. Hundreds of women from a wide array of backgrounds answered the call, efficiently and effectively building weapons, aircraft and ships for the war effort. Factory Girls explores the lives and motives of ten such women who take up employment in a fictional factory in Toronto. Members of the leisure class join working girls as they navigate a newfound sense of freedom and agency against a background of increasingly violent nationalism, imperialism and xenophobia. As the pressures of war build and what is normal becomes increasingly strange, aspects of absurdity pop up in both the lives of these women and in the telling of their stories. Factory Girls explores the question of what it means to make a bomb in the context of these women’s diverse economic, social and ideological backgrounds.

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