Women’s Memories in a Depressed Steel Valley: an Attempt to Deconstruct the Imaginings of Steel-working Lorraine

Abstract

This paper is based on a research conducted between 2004 and 2006 and dealing with the memories of women in a steel valley struck by depression since the seventies, in the North-Eastern part of France. The imagery of steel-producing Lorraine coalesced in a rather standardized way around the figure of the steelworker working at the blast furnace. This research and the exhibition which followed from it, highlighted the activities of women, in the working place as well as in the domestic realm and in community or political movements. It thus contributes to a more complex imagining and less androcentric perspective on the ironworks past of the Lorraine region.