Abstract
In her study Women in Industry at the turn of the twentieth century the civil servant, Clara Collet, concluded that, ‘In the past half century there has been no real invasion of industry generally by women, but rather a withdrawal from it.’1 Census figures corroborate a pattern of steady decline in female economic participation. Thirty-one per cent of English and Welsh women were recorded as working in 1871 — a figure that went down to 27 per cent in 1891 and 26 per cent in 1911.2 The expansion of heavy industries, particularly steel, iron and shipbuilding during the second half of the century, relied predominantly upon male labour and offered few opportunities to women.3 Indeed, it has been argued that the brunt of the country’s advancing industrialisation was born by women who suffered chronic underemployment in many regions.4 While in Ireland, the economic position of women is thought to have declined dramatically as they lost their place in the labour market and became increasingly dependent upon male relatives.5
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Notes
Quoted in Eric Richards, ‘Women in the British Economy Since about 1700: An Interpretation’, History, 59 (1974), p. 351.
Elizabeth Roberts, Women’s Work, 1840–1940 (Basingstoke: Macmillan — now Palgrave, 1988), p. 22. The equivalent rates in Scotland were 28 per cent in 1871, 27 per cent in 1891, and 24 per cent in 1911.
For a clear account of the factors affecting women’s work, the analysis of Tilly and Scott remains extremely useful: Louise A. Tilly and Joan W. Scott, Women, Work and Family (London and New York; Routledge, 1989, first published 1978), pt 2.
Ellen Jordan, ‘Female Unemployment in England and Wales, 1851–1911: An Examination of the Census Figures for 15–19 Year Olds’, Social History, 13 (1988), pp. 175–90.
Joanna Bourke, Husbandry to Housewifery: Women, Economic Change and Housework in Ireland, 1890–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993).
Quoted in Jane Lewis, Women in England 1870–1950: Social Divisions and Social Change (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1984), p. 50.
Joanna Bourke, ‘Housewifery in Working-Class England, 1860–1914’, Past and Present, 143 (1994), pp. 167–97.
Quoted in Meg Gomersall, Working-Class Girls in Nineteenth Century England: Life, Work and Schooling (Basingstoke: Macmillan - now Palgrave, 1997), p. 40.
See Dot Jones, ‘Counting the Cost of Coal: Women’s Lives in the Rhondda, 1811–1911’, in Angela V. John (ed.), Our Mothers’ Land: Chapters in Welsh Women’s History, 1830–1939 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1991), pp. 109–33.
Ann Oakley, Housewife (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), pp. 43–56.
Eleanor Gordon, Women and the Labour Movement in Scotland 1850–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 22;
see also Edward Higgs, ‘Women, Occupation and Work in the Nineteenth-Century Census’, History Workshop Journal, 23 (1987), pp. 59–80.
Ellen Ross, Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast London, 1870–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 45.
Sally Alexander, ‘Women’s Work in Nineteenth-Century London: A Study of the Years 1820–60s’, (1976) reprinted in Sally Alexander, Becoming a Woman: And other Essays in 19th and 20th Century Feminist History (London: Virago, 1994), pp. 42–5;
Melanie Tebbutt, Making Ends Meet: Pawnbroking and Working-Class Credit (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1983), pp. 51–66;
Clare Midgley, ‘Ethnicity, “race” and Empire’, in June Purvis (ed.), Women’s History: Britain, 1850–1945: An Introduction (London: UCL Press, 1995), pp. 248–9.
The discussion on homework is indebted to Duncan Bythell, The Sweated Trades: Outwork in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London: Batsford Academic, 1978);
Pamela Horn, Victorian Countrywomen (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), ch. 7;
Belinda Westover, ‘“’To Fill the Kids’ Tummies”: The Lives and Work of Colchester Tailoresses, 1880–1918’, 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. 5475;
Shelley Pennington and Belinda Westover, A Hidden Workforce: Home- workers in England, 1850–1985 (Basingstoke: Macmillan - now Palgrave, 1989);
and James A. Schmeichen, Sweated Industries and Sweated Labor: The London Clothing Trades, 1860–1914 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984).
Quoted in Barbara Drake, Women in Trade Unions (London: Virago, 1984, first published 1920), p. 31.
Sonya O. Rose, Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 96–9, 98–9.
Patricia E. Malcolmson, ‘Laundresses and the Laundry Trade in Victorian England’, Victorian Studies, 24 (1981), pp. 439–62.
Judith R. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), ch. 1;
Lucy Bland, Banishing the Beast: English Feminism and Sexual Morality 1885–1914 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), pp. 95–123;
F. K. Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), ch. 6;
Linda Nead, Myths of Sexuality: Representations of Women in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), chs 3–5.
Jenny Morris, ‘The Characteristics of Sweating: The Late Nineteenth-Century London and Leeds Tailoring Trade’, in Angela V. John (ed.), Unequal Opportunities: Women’s Employment in England 1800–1918 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp. 94–121.
Harriet Bradley, Men’s Work, Women’s Work: A Sociological History of the Sexual Division of Labour in Employment (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), p. 165.
Angela V. John, By the Sweat of their Brow: Women Workers At Victorian Coal Mines (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), pp. 176–84.
Gordon, Women and the Labour Movement pp. 156–61. See Jill Liddington and Jill Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us: The Rise of the Women’s Suffrage Movement (London: Virago, 1978), ch. 5 for the differing status of jobs within the textile factories.
Jutta Schwarzkopf, ‘Gendering Exploitation: The Use of Gender in the Campaign Against Driving in Lancashire Weaving Sheds, 1886–1903’, Women’s History Review, 7, no. 4 (1998), pp. 449–73.
Harold Benenson, ‘The “Family Wage” and Working Women’s Consciousness in Britain, 1880–1914’, Politics and Society, 19 (1991), p. 91.
Carol E. Morgan, ‘Gender Constructions and Gender Relations in Cotton and Chain-Making in England: A Contested and Varied Terrain’, Women’s History Review, 6, no. 3 (1997), pp. 376–8.
Richard Whipp, ‘Kinship, Labour and Enterprise: The Staffordshire Pottery Industry 1890–1920’, in Pat Hudson and W. R. Lee (eds), Women’s Work and the Family Economy in Historical Perspective (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), pp. 192–3.
Jill Norris, ‘“’Well Fitted for Females”: Women in the Macclesfield Silk Industry’, in J. A. Jowitt and A. J. Mclvor (eds), Employers and Labour in the English Textile Industries (London and New York: Routledge, 1988), p. 198;
Margaret Hewitt, Wives and Mothers in Victorian Industry (London: Rockliff, 1958), p. 178.
Patricia Hollis (ed.), Women in Public 1850–1900: Documents of the Victorian Women’s Movement (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1979), p. 53.
Raphael Samuel, ‘Village Labour’, in Raphael Samuel (ed.), Village Life and Labour (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), p. 21.
These details are taken from Jennie Kitteringham, ‘Country Work Girls in Nineteenth-Century England’, in Samuel, Village Life, pp. 73–138 and Horn, Victorian Countrywomen, pp. 144–63; Barbara W. Robertson, ‘In Bondage: The Female Farm Worker in South-East Scotland’, in Eleanor Gordon and Esther Breitenbach (eds), The World is Ill-Divided: Women’s Work in Scotland in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990), pp. 117–35.
Karen Sayer, Women of the Fields: Representations of Rural Women in the Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 127–35.
Quoted in Juliet Gardiner (ed.), The New Woman: Women’s Voices 1880–1918 (London: Collins and Brown, 1993), p. 129.
Leonore Davidoff, ’“Mastered for Life”: Servant and Wife in Victorian and Edwardian England’, (1974) reprinted in Leonore Davidoff, Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), p. 22; Edward Higgs, ‘Domestic Service and Household Production’, in John (ed.), Unequal Opportunities, pp. 130–5.
This issue is raised, for example, in Brian Harrison, ‘For Church, Queen and Family: The Girls’ Friendly Society, 1874–1920’, Past and Present, 61 (1973), p. 117.
Liz Stanley (ed.), The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick (London: Virago, 1984).
Margaret Llewelyn Davies (ed.), Life as We Have Known It by Co-operative Working Women (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1975, first published 1931), p. 4.
Carol Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), ch. 3;
Anna Davin, Growing Up Poor: Home, School and Street in London 1870–1914 (London: Rivers Oram, 1996), pt 2.
Ellen Mappen, Helping Women at Work: The Women’s Industrial Council, 18891914 (London: Hutchinson, 1985), pp. 132–3.
Lee Holcombe, Victorian Ladies at Work: Middle-Class Working Women in England and Wales, 1850–1914 (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1973), pp. 117–22;
Elizabeth Roberts, A Woman’s Place: An Oral History of Working-Class Women 1890–1940 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), p. 47.
Meta Zimmeck, ’“Jobs for the Girls”: The Expansion of Clerical Work for Women, 1850–1914’, in John (ed.), Unequal Opportunities pp. 158–61.
Frances Widdowson, ‘Educating Teacher - Women and Elementary Teaching in London, 1900–1914’, in Davidoff and Westover (eds), Our Work, Our Lives pp. 99–123.
F. K. Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), pp. 126–9.
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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_8
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