Mémoire et images du travail dans les parfumeries grassoises (1900-1950) : les clichés du genre

• Main Author: Coline Zellal
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Association Mnémosyne 2013-01-01
• Series: Genre & Histoire
• Subjects: Gender; Fragrance industry; Perfume; Grasse; Female workers; Flower picking
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/genrehistoire/1551

In the first half of the 20th century, the perfume industry in Grasse sought to preserve its image anchored in a traditional production process while adjusting to the new industrial technologies of the period. Using as sources postcards, movies and photographs, the author explores the weight of gendered task divisions from the picking of flowers to packaging, revealing the changing gendered contours of shops, businesses and, indeed, the whole sector. The study focuses on the interactions between these images, showing how social representations influenced their production and the a posteriori reconstruction of a collective memory and identity by the former workers of the perfume industry. The comparison between oral history, written sources and iconography reveals how gender conditioned the history of the fragrance industry.