5.2: Women as Industrial Workers
Industrialization meant that many families had to supplement their meager wages through the employment of women and children. Women were still responsible for running the household; those employed outside the home primarily worked as domestic servants, but some worked in factories, especially if they were unmarried. In addition, families often needed children to supplement the family income as factory workers.
Watch this excerpt from this lecture you watched earlier to focus on how the Industrial Revolution changed women's lives.
Read this short article about women's roles in the workforce at the time of the Industrial Revolution. It includes accounts of women working in factories, as field hands, and as coal miners.
Read these short excerpts from Parliamentary papers about English women working in coal mines'. Accounts vary from those of the women themselves to an outside inspector who finds the spectacle of women working in the coal mines "disgusting"'.
Read this article about the emergence of two jobs suitable for unmarried middle-class women. At the time, women who were not strictly of the laboring class were not supposed to work outside the home, but "there were not enough husbands to go round", and it was not always possible for a woman's family to support her throughout her life. Being a nurse or a typewriter gradually became more acceptable employment for single, middle-class women, helping those who remained unmarried.