The Waterbury Watch Museum Articles \ "Women As Watchmakers" “The Waterbury” December, 1893 Women As Watchmakers An expert watch manufacturer says: In many lines of the work women are superior to men, and in all lines women are more faithful. They have not the mechanical ability of men – at least they do not show it. Women tend a machine as well or better than men, so long as the machine runs all right. But if it gets out of order they at once drop it and send for a man to fix it. My own idea is that mechanical ability is natural to men and not to women. It crops out in the small boy, but seldom or never in the little girl. In this one respect alone men are ahead of women in watchmaking. But in delicacy of touch, quickness, smoothness, and faithfulness, women are greatly the superior .We have women who do more work and better work than men. In the long run, though, women are not as valuable as men, for the sole reason that they do not enter the business as a life work. In nine cases out of ten when a woman watchmaker becomes most valuable she gives up watchmaking and gets married. Nobody can blame her, of course, but it is the fact all the same. There are exceptions.