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.