Abstract
Between 1860 and 1900 many dramatic advances were seen in middle-class and elite women’s employment. Improvements in educational provision facilitated access to a whole range of new occupations, notably in the medical, clerical, retailing and education sectors. One recent commentator has attributed these developments to the activities of the feminist movement, and in particular, the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women.1 Feminist campaigns were undoubtedly vital in contributing to a climate in which women’s paid employment was increasingly acceptable. However, structural changes in the economy and the continued adherence to notions of gender difference were often more influential in determining the nature of women’s employment. Moreover, for the majority of women, this was period of a stasis, not change. Women continued to engage in‘traditional’ activities — such as domestic management, child care and philanthropy. Most women entertained a broad definition of work which did not necessarily encompass the concept of paid employment.
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Notes
Ellen Jordan, The Women’s Movement and Women’s Employment in Nineteenth- Century Britain (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 195–7.
Details of these developments may be found in June Purvis, A History of Women’s Education in England (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991), pp. 75–92;
Jane McDermid, ‘Women and Education’, in June Purvis (ed.), Women’s History: Britain, 1850–1945 (London: UCL, 1995), pp. 109–11;
Maria Luddy (ed.), Women in Ireland, 1800–1918: A Documentary History (Cork: Cork University Press, 1995), pp. 89–92.
Carol Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), ch. 2, the quotes are from pp. 73 and 92;
Sara Delamont, ‘The Contradictions in Ladies’ Education’, in Sara Delamont and Lorna Duffin (eds), Nineteenth-Century Woman: Her Cultural and Physical World (London: Croom Helm, 1978), pp. 134–63.
Ruth Watts, Gender, Power and the Unitarians in England 1760–1860 (London: Longmans, 1998), p. 156.
The discussion on universities draws on Carol Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex? Women in British Universities 1870–1939 (London: UCL, 1995), passim.
Delamont, ‘The Contradictions in Ladies’ Education’, pp. 134–63, the quote is from p. 157; Barbara Caine, Victorian Feminists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), ch. 3.
Anne Digby, ‘Women’s Biological Straitjacket’, in Susan Mendus and Jane Rendall (eds), Sexuality and Subordination: Interdisciplinary Studies of Gender in the Nineteenth Century (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), pp. 208–15.
Ibid., Martha Vicinus, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850–1920 (London: Virago, 1985), ch. 4;
Janet Howarth and Mark Curthoys, ‘The Political Economy of Women’s Higher Education in Late 19th and Early 20th Century Britain’, Social History, 60 (1987), pp. 108–31.
Rita McWilliams-Tullberg, ‘Women and Degrees at Cambridge University, 1862–97’, in Martha Vicinus (ed.), A Widening Sphere, Changing Roles of Victorian Women (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), p. 125.
Lee Holcombe, Victorian Ladies at Work: Middle-Class Working Women in England and Wales 1850–1914 (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1973), p. 34.
Juliet Gardiner (ed.), The New Woman: Women’s Voices 1880–1918 (London: Collins and Brown, 1993), pp. 81–2; Vicinus, Independent Women ch. 5.
Frances Widdowson, ‘Educating Teacher–Women and Elementary Teaching in London, 1900–1914’, in Leonore Davidoff and Belinda Westover (eds), Our Work, Our Lives, Our Worlds: Women’s History and Women’s Work (Basingstoke: Macmillan–now Palgrave, 1986), pp. 99–123.
Joyce Senders Pedersen, ‘Some Victorian Headmistresses: A Conservative Tradition of Social Reform’, Victorian Studies, 29 (1981), pp. 463–88.
Elizabeth Roberts, A Woman’s Place: An Oral History of Working-Class Women 1890–1940 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), pp. 29, 35. The pressures on teachers are brought out in
Anna Davin, Growing Up Poor: Home, School and Street in London 1870–1914 (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1996), pt. 2.
M. Jeanne Peterson, Family, Love and Work in the Lives of Victorian Gentlewomen (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989), pp. 139–45.
Pat Jalland, Women, Marriage and Politics, 1860–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 283.
Catriona Blake, The Charge of the Parasols: Women’s Entry to the Medical Profession (London: The Women’s Press, 1990), p. 69. This paragraph follows The Charge of the Parasols, passim.
Antoinette Burton, ‘Contesting the Zenana: The Mission to Make ‘“Lady Doctors” for India’, 1874–85’, Journal of British Studies, 35 (1995), pp. 368–97.
Anne Summers, Angels and Citizens: British Women as Military Nurses 1854–1914 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988), chs 5–7.
Pamela Horn, Victorian Countrywomen (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), p. 218; Summers, Angels or Citizens p. 140.
Patricia Hollis (ed.), Women in Public 1850–1900: Documents of the Victorian Women’s Movement (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1979), p. 45.
Jane Lewis, Women in England, 1870–1950 (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1984), p. 197.
Ellen Jordan, ‘The Lady Clerks at the Prudential: The Beginning of Vertical Segregation by Sex in Clerical Work in Nineteenth-Century Britain’, Gender and History, 8, no. 1 (1996), pp. 65–81.
Meta Zimmeck, ‘Jobs for the Girls: The Expansion of Clerical Work for Women, 1850–1914’, in Angela V. John (ed.), Unequal Opportunities, Women’s Employment in England 1800–1918 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp. 153–77, quote from p. 165; Holcombe, Victorian Ladies at Work pp. 151, 178–9.
Philippa Levine, Victorian Feminism, 1850–1900 (London: Hutchinson, 1987), pp. 93–6.
Harriet Bradley, Men’s Work, Women’s Work: A Sociological History of the Sexual Division of Labour in Employment (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), p. 180.
Peterson, Family, Love and Work, pp. 145–61. For female travellers, see Jane Robinson, Wayward Women: A Guide to Women Travellers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
J. A. Banks and Olive Banks, Feminism and Family Planning in Victorian England (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1964), passim but see especially p. 12.
Carol Dyhouse, Feminism and the Family 1880–1939 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), ch. 3.
A. James Hammerton, Cruelty and Companionship: Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Married Life (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 114–15.
Jessica Gerard, Country House Life: Family and Servants, 1815–1914 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), p. 98.
Jessica Gerard, ‘Lady Bountiful: Women of the Landed Classes and Rural Philanthropy’, Victorian Studies 30 (1987), pp. 183–211. The quote is on p. 191.
Pamela Horn, High Society: The English Social Elite, 1880–1914 (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1992), p. 53.
Shelley Pennington and Belinda Westover, A Hidden Workforce: Home-workers in England, 1850–1985 (London: Macmillan–now Palgrave, 1989), pp. 19–21.
Peterson, Family, Love and Work, p. 69; Nupur Chaudhuri, ‘Memsahibs and Motherhood in Nineteenth-Century Colonial India’, Victorian Studies, 31 (1988), pp. 534–5.
Leonore Davidoff, The Best Circles: Society, Etiquette and the Season (London: Croom Helm, 1973), p. 63; Horn, High Society p. 68.
Angela V.John, ‘Beyond Paternalism: The Ironmaster’s Wife in the Industrial Community’, in Angela V. John (ed.), Our Mothers’ Land: Chapters in Welsh Women’s History, 1830–1939 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1991), p. 54.
F. K. Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 224.
Peter Williams, ‘“The Missing Link”. The Recruitment of Women Missionaries in Some English Evangelical Missionary Societies in the Nineteenth Century’, in Fiona Bowie, Deborah Kirkwood and Shirley Ardener (eds), Women and Missions: Past and Present. Anthropological and Historical Perceptions (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1993), p. 43.
Catriona Clear, ‘The Limits of Female Autonomy: Nuns in Nineteenth- Century Ireland’, in Maria Luddy and Cliona Murphy (eds), Women Surviving, Studies in Irish Women’s History in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Dublin: Poolbeg Press, 1989), p. 21.
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© 2001 Kathryn Gleadle
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Gleadle, K. (2001). Work. In: British Women in the Nineteenth Century. Social History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-3754-4_11
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