Women's Work

Page 3 of 7

• 1. Families and households
• 2. The evidence of women's work
• 3. The varieties of women's work
• 4. Women and the family firm
• 5. Women's work, industrialisation and gender
• 6. A double burden
• 7. Find out more
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The varieties of women's work

What do we know from the difficult evidence about patterns of women's work over time and in different regions and sectors of the economy? The most obvious feature of women's work was its importance to most families, its variability across time and space and its persistent association with certain trades and sectors.

Female employment in the 1850s, 60s and 70s appears to have been higher than any recorded again until after World War II. Family budget evidence suggests that around 30-40 per cent of women from working class families contributed significantly to household incomes in the mid-Victorian years. This might have been even higher during the industrial revolution decades, before the rise of State and trade union policies regulating female labour and promoting the male breadwinner ideal.

'Domestic service of all kinds was the single largest employer of women ...'

As in earlier centuries, the bulk of waged work for women appears to have been found in trades associated with female skills or proclivities, particularly where these were also casual and low paid. Domestic service of all kinds was the single largest employer of women (40 per cent of female occupations stated in the census of 1851 in provincial cities and 50 per cent in London). The textile and clothing sectors came a close second. Women were also found in large numbers in metalwares and pottery and in a variety of petty trades, especially in towns: confectionery, brewing and other provisioning, seamstressing, laundry work, cleaning and retailing. Because many sectors which employed large numbers of women were concentrated in certain regions of the country (as with the cotton and woollen industries of south Lancashire and west Yorkshire), the statistics of female labour force participation varied across the country.

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Published: 2001-01-01