This book opens up a window on the life of a female labourer who lived
and worked in a small ironworks village in central Finland. Her life
touches upon many of the core aspects of 20th-century social change in
Finland: increasing educational opportunities, social mobility, the
emergence of new technologies and the transformation of gender roles.
The research focuses on experiences related to gender, class and work,
and on the changes occurring in these aspects of life. The research
material consists of life-narrative interviews charting a process during
which the author of this study engaged in an intergenerational dialogue
with an elderly woman born in 1927 who is also her grandmother. The
research stands at the crossroads of ethnology, folklore studies as well
as social, micro and oral history.