Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth CenturyClark, Alice
History
Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century
Clark, Alice
Women -- Employment -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century; Women -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century
Capitalism effected economic revolution in women’s position—By (_a_)
substitution of individual for family wages—(_b_) employment of
wage-earners on master’s premises—(_c_) rapid increase of master’s
wealth.
Exclusion of women from skilled trades not originally due to sex
jealousy—Women’s lack of specialised training due, (_a_) to its being
unnecessary; (_b_) the desire to keep wife in subjection to
husband—Reduction in the value to her family of woman’s productive
capacity by substitution of wage-earning for domestic industry—Effect of
her productive energy on her maternal functions and her social
influence.
THE preceding chapters have demonstrated the great productive capacity
which women possessed when society was organised on the basis of Family
and Domestic Industry. There was then no hard-and-fast line dividing
domestic occupations from other branches of industry, and thus it has
not been possible to discover how much of women’s labour was given to
purposes of trade and how much was confined to the service of their
families; but as labour was at this time equally productive, whether it
was employed for domestic purposes or in Trade, it is not necessary to
discriminate between these two classes of production in estimating the
extent to which the community depended upon women’s services. The goods
produced and the services rendered to their families by wives and
daughters, must if they had been idle have employed labour otherwise
available for Trade; or to put the position in another way, if the
labour of women had been withdrawn from the domestic industries and
applied to Trade, more goods would have been produced for the market,
which goods the said women’s families would then have obtained by
purchase; but while by this means the trade of the country would be
greatly increased, unless the efficiency of women’s labour had been
raised by its transference from domestic to other forms of industry, the
wealth of the community would remain precisely the same.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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