Barmaids: A History of Women's Work in Pubs

In this innovative mixture of labor history and cultural history, Diane Kirkby explores the central figure of the barmaid. Drawing on previously unexplored archives, new documentary sources and oral history, Barmaids traces the sexualization of the industry and the feminist and temperance debates about it. It covers women's demands for equal pay and drinking rights in the postwar period and concludes in the mid-1990s with changes in the labor market and drinking customs that saw the end of the old pub culture and the place of barmaids within it.