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History Notes Approaches to History Notes

Approaches Gender Work Notes

Updated Approaches Gender Work Notes

Approaches to History Notes

Approaches to History

Approximately 45 pages

These notes provide comprehensive cover of the Approaches to History topics of Gender and Sociology. They were the sole resource that I used for my preliminary examination revision, in which I achieved a mark of 67%. They include a wealth of examples spanning across a wide range of time periods (from medieval to modern), as well as discussion of a broad range of historiography, making them a complete resource for studying for the Approaches prelim, if you are taking the Gender or Sociology option...

The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Approaches to History Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

Approaches Revision Notes:

GENDER:

Good essay structure/set of points to focus on:

  • Wage disparity/property ownership.

  • Association of men and skilled work, women and unskilled.

  • Centrality of women to the home.

  • Women’s public identity as workers.

1. How does the history of work interact with perceptions of gender roles?

HISTORIOGRAPHY:

  • One of historical traditions = that late medieval period was a ‘golden age’ for women workers.

  • ‘Golden age’ = useful arg for both liberal feminists (can easily return) and socialists (capitalism is the enemy).

  • Susan Cahn talked of “women’s descent from paradise”.

  • Judith M Bennett warns against idealising the medieval period.

  • Too easy: “’medieval’ functions in this story as the antithesis of modernity”. Pessimism = “almost a foundational faith of women’s history”. Suits “our longings for another world… of a kinder and gentler variety”. Labels this “history’s seductive tale”.

  • “The medieval household economy was not an egalitarian refuge that capitalism and industrialism somehow cruelly undermined”.

  • The decline of the position of women has been linked to the growth of capitalism.

  • However, many historians now disagree with this.

  • K Honeyman and J Goodman: “labour markets in which women face discrimination are… very longstanding”.

  • Honeyman and Goodman talk of the “complex relationships between patriarchy and economic materialism”.

  • Some see women’s role in the home as the equivalent (as in just as important):

  • “Some Marxist-feminists have redefined reproduction as the functional equivalent of production” (Joan Scott).

  • Nice quote: “the household economy… was shot through with sexual inequality” (J M Bennett).

  • Overall, there has been less change than one might imagine:

  • J M Bennett talks of “strong and sure continuities in women’s work across the centuries”.

REINFORCES BREAKS DOWN

Because of women’s other priorities, they could not participate in work in the same way, and this reinforced gender roles.

  • E.g. ‘How can a woman in these deplorable circumstances educate and raise her children decently?’ (Tailor delegates to the London Exposition, 1862).

  • Emph on women’s place being in the home: Edmund Tilney, Master of the Revels to Elizabeth I, stated firmly in 1568, ‘the office of the husband is to provide money; of the wife not wastefully to spend it’.

  • Less able to support themselves: P Slack’s study of the Poor Law in Eng shows old women 2x as likely to be in receipt of relief as men.

Did farmers in the late medieval period really care about gender?

  • Wages called “the lowest common denominator of comparability” by Joan Scott.

  • Susan Bardsley argues that they didn’t, only about price, and that it was piece rate that mattered.

  • “Wage discrimination… is neither rational nor efficient” (Bardsley).

  • Bardsley argues that wage ration went from 70% C14th to 50% later C18th. (Bennett argues against this – supplementary produce, regional diffs mean it was more likely always around the 70% mark).

  • E.g. Alice George, tall woman, 1681: received as much as a man as she could do the same work (rec’d by John Locke).

  • E.g. usually, estimates from England in the 1830s-40s showed that a man could reap an acre in the time it took a woman to reap .

Guilds played a crucial part in reinforcing masculine stereotypes, as well as male bonding.

  • First discussed by Lionel Tiger in ‘Men in Groups’. Said men did this to boost their control.

  • Merry Wiesner also highlights this, focussing on early modern Germany. Says may have homoerotic element.

  • Honeyman and Goodman agree – highlight how by late C15th, all of Cologne’s guilds were male.

  • Helped to propagate view that women = disorderly.

  • Married journey men were attacked with “vehemency” (Wiesner) – many chose to stay single, living in all-male journeyman’s hostels.

  • “A seedbed of fraternity as a popular belief” (Anthony Black).

  • A Baron talks of “homoerotic content of male work culture”. Also of “homoerotic undercurrent”, e.g. Western US oil drilling rig worker pinned down, ‘semi-caustic sealing compound’ applied to genitals.

  • J M Bennett also agrees, pointing out that “the presence of sisters in a guild is not an automatic sign of sexual egalitarianism”. E.g. Brewers’ Guild of LDN, 1418-38: women attended fewer feasts, wore livery less freq, none participated in gov’t etc.

During time of work protests, women could come to the fore:

  • E.g. 1830s and 40s were time of disruption for French garment tradesmen due to the growth of ‘confection’ (ready-made clothes). Women important in the protest, e.g. ‘La Tribune des Femmes’ = protest newspaper edited 1832-34 by Saint-Simonian women. Central in winning contracts from Rev’nry gov’t in 1848.

  • Could also help to build collective identity of women (e.g. Joan Scott’s argument RE: the above), and make them aware of their potential for power: “To seamstress leaders the exclusion of women from universal suffrage was a gross injustice” (Scott). ‘La Voix des Femmes’ (feminist-socialist newspaper) est in above period.

  • **VERY SIGNIFICANT POINT – key thing = public domain of work.

Men’s domain = v clearly generally assoc with being outside OR skilled, women’s in the home OR unskilled.

  • Argued by Honeyman and Goodman, Europe post-1500.

Women often did play a central role, just a more subtle one.

  • Davidoff and Hall’s key argument.

  • E.g. Luxembourg Palace meeting, 1848, over ‘confection’ statement that masters’ wives could be there as back up, to lend a hand sewing etc. when needed.

  • Also argument that reproduction = equivalent.

  • *Not v persuasive.

Even when the number of women in work did increase, this often caused a backlash.

  • E.g. after wars.

  • E.g. Journeymen tailors, LDN, 1830s accused women of undercutting their product by working for cheap prices.

  • E.g. done by trade unions through ‘gendering’ of machinery.

  • E.g. Brit 1840s: ^ women in work created debate over whether it was morally right.

  • E.g. leg restricting women and children’s factory work est in Brit 1842, Germany...

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