Patriarchy Challenged? Women and Work in Nineteenth-century Industrial Lancashire

Abstract

The organisation of labour in proto-industrial textile production foreshadowed its organisation in capitalist industrial production, with an occupational interchange between the work of men and women that defined spinning as ‘skilled’ male work and weaving as ‘unskilled’ women’s work. Pinchbeck explained this in simple terms, suggesting that it was their physical strength that made male spinners numerically dominant and ‘skilled’ workers.¹ But a singular explanation of physical strength as the sole criterion of occupational competence fails to recognise the significance of ascriptive criteria in defining the respective capabilities of men and women and the ways in which the advantages enjoyed by some workers, mainly men, can be utilised to reinforce and gain advantage, often at the expense of more vulnerable workers, mainly women. As the spinning machines became more complex, a sub-contracting system of labour organisation developed whereby the spinner directly employed several assistants (piecers), often his wife and/or children, paying for this out of his own piece-rate earnings. It was the replication of his paternal authority within the family within this supervisory role which defined the adult male as a spinner, and it was essentially their control over the recruitment to the ‘skilled’ ranks of the spinners that the direct employment of the piecers gave them that confirmed the spinners’ well paid and skilled status.