A Sisterhood Made of Steel

Abstract

In the mid-1970s, Sue Doro began work as a machinist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Donna De Graaf-Smith became a mill worker in East Chicago, Indiana. On-the-job sex-based discrimination (way beyond catcalls, lewd leering, and getting renamed “sweetheart”) quickly ensued. What follows are two stories (Doro’s in regular typeface, De Graaf-Smith’s in italics) detailing how female employees were received in heavy industry as recently as thirty years ago. The extent to which the two narratives overlap is remarkable, which is why we’ve chosen to run them as one.