Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh.

Pamela Sharpe's Adapting to Capitalism. Working Women in the English Economy, 1700-1850 (London: Macmillan, 1996; pp. x + 226. 40 [pounds sterling]) and Elizabeth C. Sanderson's Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh (as above, pp. xii + 236. 40 [pounds sterling]) are both part of the series `Studies in Gender History'. Although the focus on gender is a welcome one, the publishers might want to think about the scope of their series, and what they mean by gender history. The titles published so far, coupled with a blurb which promises that the series `continues to restore women to history and history to women', betrays a rather old-fashioned association of women with gender. As the increasing numbers of historians who study the `gendered history of men' would be only too eager to point out, there is more …