I Read the information about the textile workers in Britain. Make a list of jobs mentioned in the text. Think about any differences in this field in your country

Each step of textile development, manufacturing and promotion involves different groups of workers in the industry.

Knitwear Designers are almost entirely female. Male fashion designers are a small but significant minority, but male knitwear designers are quite rare. Almost all knitwear designers in Britain are graduates of design courses at the former polytechnics, which last three years plus a year working in industry. The polytechnics were set up to provide more practically oriented higher education than the universities; in practice their courses are very similar to those at universities, though they tend to attract less able students; they were permitted to call themselves universities in 1992. The designers see themselves as middle class graduate professionals doing a poorly paid professional job. A large majority of knitwear designers are under 30.

Knitting Machine Technicians are almost entirely male. We have not yet heard of a female knitting machine technician. Technicians are trained in in-house training schemes at large companies, and are usually recruited straight from school or by training up bright young knitters. They see themselves as mechanics: working class skilled manual workers promoted to good jobs. They usually remain at one company for a long time, often for their entire careers. They are usually older than the designers they work with.

Sampling Make-Up Staff are almost entirely female. We have heard of no males working in sampling make-up. Sampling staff are recruited by promoting the most able production make-up workers. They see themselves as working class skilled manual workers promoted to good jobs.

Knitting Machine Operators (Knitters) are almost entirely male. We have heard of female knitters but they are uncommon in Britain. Knitters are responsible for running groups of industrial knitting machines.

Production Make-Up Staff are almost entirely female. The proportion of male make-up employees depends on the company. The make-up employees comprise garment cutters, who cut knitted fabric into pieces, and people who operate various kinds of sewing machine, principally overlockers. Packing and quality control is also usually done by women.

Managers are predominantly male. Most managers are recruited from people with no background in the knitwear industry, or who have textile management or textile technology degrees, though some are promoted from within the company. According to our informants very few managers are former designers or technicians. This has the consequence that companies are managed by people lacking a detailed first hand understanding of the design process. Knitwear is dominated by small firms. A large fraction of companies are family concerns run by their owners, where the managerial structures depend on the family structures; most of the other larger mass-market companies are subsidiaries of large organizations. Only the larger knitwear companies have enough designers to require a head designer with managerial duties.

Neither designers nor technicians have much power within knitwear companies, nor influence over their decision making processes, but technicians gain some influence by being difficult to replace. The designers' major source of influence is their special knowledge of future developments in fashion and the requirements of the market, though they often have close ties to customers and suppliers. They are often seen as both junior and temporary, and very easy to replace (as there are more young designers than jobs). This makes managers reluctant to invest money, time or effort in training designers, especially in how to use their companies' CAD systems. Decisions about which knitting machines to buy are made primarily on price and functionality. However companies are very reluctant to change machine manufacturers unless their current manufacturer cannot provide the functionality and service they need, partly because the expertise of their technicians is to some extent limited to one manufacturer. The designers' only influence on CAD system purchasing decisions comes from knowing what functionality the coming fashions will require. This has the potentially important consequence that there will seldom be much pressure to choose more designer-friendly CAD systems.

Knitting machine technician is an occupation requiring mechanical aptitude, and before the days of electronic machines and computerization it involved a significant amount of work requiring physical strength (especially moving rolls of metal punch cards, which were heavy). The use of the belief that women are incapable of hard physical work excludes women from technical occupations.

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