Women's Work

Page 6 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
• Print entire article

A double burden

In areas where many women, including married women, worked full time for wages (for example in some of the cotton textile towns of the north west such as Preston) there may have developed greater sharing of housework between men and women, and a more prominent role for women in local politics. However, there are more examples where working women shouldered the double burden of waged work and the bulk of household responsibilities, and where their role in politics remained marginal.

'...working women shouldered the double burden of waged work and the bulk of household responsibilities...'

As the 19th century progressed, there was a greater prevalence of gender-specific employment which was often used to enhance control and discipline in the workplace. Supervisory roles were almost exclusively taken by men, and men also came to operate the most expensive and sophisticated machinery and to monopolise the high status and higher paid jobs even in textiles. The expansion of heavy industries such as iron, steel, mining, engineering and ship building in the later century also created sectors which employed almost exclusively male labour, which were associated solely with male attributes and which endorsed the male breadwinner ideal. Thus a hardening of gender assumptions in the nineteenth century was closely associated with corresponding changes in the workplace.

NextPrevious

Published: 2001-01-01