WOMEN OFFICE WORKERS 57 Census, including such occupations as library assistants, physicians, office attendants, bank tellers, book keepers, cashiers, bill collectors, vehicle dispatchers, railway mail clerks, file clerks, insurance adjusters, messengers and office boys (sic), office machine operators, payroll clerks, postal clerks, receptionists, secretaries, shipping clerks, stenographers, storekeepers, telegraph operators, telephone operators, ticket agents and typists, plus sales workers who work in an office-like context, especially retail sale clerks who work primarily around office machinery. Reckoning only the clerical category, 35.5 per cent of all employed women are in this stratum; adding sales which is admittedly a vaguer category, 42.5 per cent of all employed women do some form of office work. Not included here is the type of office work done by those in professional occupations, for example, librarians. By contrast, 21.5 per cent of all employed women are considered "service workers" (mainly in private households), and 10.8 per cent are blue collar operatives. Service workers should not be confused with workers in the "services sector", which includes not only a range of personal services such as hairdressing, repair work and the like, but also wholesale and retail trade, finance, insurance, real estate, and sometimes government. Much of the work in the services sector, especially in government, consists of office work. While 5.2 million women were employed in manufacturing in January 1975, 6.9 million were in wholesale and retail trade, 2.2 million in finance, insurance and real estate, 7.5 million in personal services, and 6.7 million in government (including over 0.75 million in federal service, nearly 1.4 million in state government, and 4.5 million in local government. The latter category includes, of course, school teachers). Class or Stratum? In what ways are these women "workers", that is, members of a working class as distinct from being simply an occupational stratum which can be distinguished from "blue collar operatives/' let us say, by the fact that they do "non-manual" labour for the most part? The assumption here is that while "class" may involve a stratum or strata of occupations, something more is involved. A c 'class" is identifiable by ( a) a common position relative to the means of production and distribution, that is, a common source of income based on the relationship between an individual and the economic mode of production; (b) an interest different from and sometimes hostile to that of other classes, because of the different position relative to the economic system; (c) consequent separate life-styles; and, (d) according to some theorists, a consciousness of membership in that class and a political organization which expresses that consciousness.1 Seen in this Marxian perspective women office workers constitute part of the working class, first because one dimension of their relationship to the economic system is that of selling their labour power in return for a wage while producing surplus-value which is appropriated by another