Barmaids

by Diane Elizabeth Kirkby

Since colonisation the pub has been integral to Australian life, both socially and economically. In this innovative mixture of labour and cultural history, Diane Kirkby explores the pub as a workplace, and the central figure of pub culture - the barmaid. Kirkby weaves visual materials, previously unused archives and barmaids' own recollections into a rich narrative. She shows how gender shaped the pub through the interaction between female bar staff and male clientele, and traces the sexualisation of the industry. She provides new insights into the nineteenth-century feminist and temperance debates on women's work and examines the legal and industrial context in which working conditions developed. Barmaids traces the changing dynamics of bar work through the rush hour swill of early closing, and women's demands for equal pay and drinking rights, to the modern barmaid as 'flexible hotel careerist'.