Gender Norms and Women's Work in the Industrial Revolution

The Emergence of Separate Spheres

The Industrial Revolution spurred seismic changes in male and female relationships that still shape how we perceive one another today. During the pre-industrial era, although there was a general division of labor on family farms, women and men did not occupy entirely separate spheres. There was little division between public and private life: work and home were intertwined. However, with industrialization, as people moved to cities and began to work for factory owners rather than for themselves, the relationships between men and women began to change fundamentally. As Jan Marsh notes, "whereas in the 1830s wives often assisted husbands in a small business or professional practice, by the 1890s work and home were commonly separated; exceptions included shopkeeping and upland farming."¹ The home became conceptualized as the private, female, interior, domestic sphere, set against the male public sphere.

According to Marsh, "early Victorian gender prescriptions featured men as industrious breadwinners and women as their loyal helpmeets… men were figured as competitors in the amoral, economic realm while women were positioned as either decorative trophies or spiritual guardians of men's immortal souls."² This ideological divide, which historians have termed the "separate spheres" doctrine, would come to define Victorian social life and profoundly constrain women's economic opportunities throughout the nineteenth century.

Shifts in Female Labor and Employment

The Industrial Revolution oversaw a profound demographic shift in labor. Male employment shifted from agriculture to heavy industry, manufacturing, and transport, with an accompanying increase in clerical and professional occupations. Men also left domestic service, which remained the largest category of female employment throughout the period — employing ten percent of the female population in 1851 and over eleven percent in 1891.³ Certain occupations were dominated by women, such as textile work, laundries, and sewing, though these jobs were often far less well-paid than those held by men.⁴

Many traditionally female ways of making a living were also gutted by industrialization. As Joyce Burnette explains, "before the Industrial Revolution, hand spinning had been a widespread female employment… the new textile machines of the Industrial Revolution changed that. Wages for hand-spinning fell, and many rural women who had previously spun found themselves unemployed. In a few locations, new cottage industries such as straw-plaiting and lace-making grew and took the place of spinning, but in other locations women remained unemployed."⁵

Later in the century, some of the labor laws designed to protect women and children actually reduced female employment. The Factory Act of 1847, which extended relatively modest protections to women — prohibiting their workdays from exceeding ten hours on weekdays and eight hours on Saturdays, with mandatory Sundays off — led employers to favor adult male workers, since male employment remained less restricted.⁶

Professionalization and the Exclusion of Women

The Industrial Revolution also saw an explosion of literacy, a positive development in many respects, but one which initially widened the divide between educated males and less-educated females, given that women — even upper-class women — were not necessarily afforded equal access to practical education. Gradually, however, this began to change and women's access to education became more comprehensive. As Marsh observes, "whereas in 1800 the majority of Britons had a predominantly practical education, acquired at home and at work, by 1901 formal learning at primary level was universal, with higher instruction available to the better-off. It is worth noting that girls were beginning to move on to university study by the 1860s."⁷

The demarcation of the male public sphere and the female private sphere also gave rise to the professionalization of occupations such as medicine, which further disenfranchised women. As Burnette argues, "the professionalization of certain occupations resulted in the exclusion of women from work they had previously done. Women had provided medical care for centuries, but the professionalization of medicine in the early nineteenth century made it a male occupation."⁸ Women's roles as midwives and tenders of the sick were impinged upon by professional medical practitioners, and their traditional roles at the sickbed were assumed by men.

The profession of medicine itself became polarized into different roles. While, as late as the American Civil War, males often assumed the role of nurse, this profession — once conceptualized as a doctor's helper — became increasingly relegated to women. Figures such as Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale worked tirelessly to garner greater respect for the roles nurses could play. Even the role of midwife became male-dominated, as men who oversaw childbirth took on the oxymoronic title of "male midwife."⁹

Conclusion: A Mixed Legacy

In evaluating whether industrialization was "good" or "bad" for women, the legacy is mixed. Industrialization resulted in greater urbanization and education for both genders and exposed women to certain occupations they might not otherwise have been able to enjoy. Some women used the new opportunities offered to expand their personal and economic spheres. But the ideology of the division between male and female labor also grew more extreme, and many women lost their livelihoods as their traditional work became characterized as inherently male in character rather than female. The full reckoning of industrialization's effects on women's lives thus resists any simple verdict.