Women's Work

Page 5 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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Women's work, industrialisation and gender

The nature of industrialisation was much influenced by the prevalence of women's work and by the wider role of women in Victorian society. Women were prominent in many sectors which underwent considerable technological and organisational change partly because employers at first found it easier to recruit women and juveniles to new practices in the face of opposition from established, unionised or skilled adult male workers. Women provided a flexible, cheap and adaptive workforce for factories and sweatshops, and had feminine skills associated with some of the most rapidly expanding consumer goods industries at the forefront of industrialisation such as textiles, pottery, clothing and victualling. Some new technologies were adapted and modified with young female workers in mind, while the cheap labour of women and children could also hold back mechanisation in favour of traditional labour intensive methods.

'Women provided a flexible, cheap and adaptive workforce...'

Regional and sectoral variations in the extent to which women were involved in waged work had a major impact upon regional differences in gender relations within families and communities, and upon the complexion of local politics and trade unionism. Women's wage-earning ability often gave them more influence over wider familial and community decision making. This included decisions about consumption, and has been held partly responsible for the increasing independence and fashion consciousness of young women, and the rise in mass spending on household goods, clothing, furniture, curtains and foodstuffs. The more women worked for wages the less time they had to produce their own goods for the home.

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Published: 2001-01-01