Knitwear Designers. Almost Entirely Female. Male fashion designers are a small but significant minority, but male knitwear designers are quite rare, and we have heard of exactly one man taking a specialist knitwear design course. 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. (Starting salaries are usually under 10 000, which is much less than for almost all other graduate jobs.) A large majority of knitwear designers are under 30. (Those who returned our questionnaire were the most senior in their companies, and had an average age of 29; most had taken courses including a knitwear component, but few had done specialist knitwear courses.) The stereotype among other workers in the knitwear industry that "designers leave to have babies" appears to have some foundation in reality: most give up designing after a few years, though many switch to other jobs; designers returning to work after starting families usually go into management or work in other occupations. The average time a designer remains with one employer is about three years; our informants comment that designers tend to get stale designing for one market after about two years. In consequence designers are usually younger and more junior than the people they work with, and are not regarded as long term investments. This pattern is also influenced by what companies want in a designer: as one designer commented to us, 'youth is considered a positive asset in designers, as they are more "in touch" with changing ebbs of fashion and are seen as "fresher" and not yet "jaded". '

Knitting Machine Technicians. 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. 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). 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. Almost Entirely Female. The proportion of male make-up employees depends on the company: we know of one with several men, but all the others we have information on have none. 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. 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 (Rubery et al., 1992). 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 organisations like Courtaulds and Coats Viyella (which are the two giant companies with many semi-independent branches). Only the larger knitwear companies have enough designers to require a head designer with managerial duties. Recently two very large companies appointed their head designers directors: this was reported to us by various people as a complete novelty. One designer-turned-manager commented to us that very few designers have the ability and personality to be managers, and that her company wanted to recruit a designer with management potential and had difficulty finding one. Many writers have commented that women are discriminated against in promotion decisions (for example, Alban-Metcalfe and West, 1991; Bruce and Lewis, 1990); knitwear designers have no competition from men for promotion as designers, but we expect that sex discrimination affects their prospects of promotion to more general management jobs. However we are unable to unpack the influences exerted by sex discrimination, discrimination by group stereotype, the intellectual abilities of designers and other potential managers, designers' personalities, and the differences of priorities and values between designers and managers. The knitwear industry would be a good domain for a serious study of the interaction of these factors.