Effect of Industrialization on Women - Separation of Home and Work - Essay Example

The evolution of women’s work structure and development of feminine attitudes with respect to work happened in three distinct phases; the first ranging from the 1760s to 1880s, the second ranging from 1880s to 1940s, while the third being the postwar era (McBride). While in the first phase, work opportunities increased for women in terms of domestic manufacturing, employment opportunities for women started to decline from the 1880s until after the Second World War as the employment opportunities became related to the stagnating textile industry.

Agriculture, domestic services, and manufacturing had started to contract in this phase. Change of the industry’s structure toward such heavy industries as metallurgy, machines, and mining signified a decrease in the work for married women workers. Although the government was not controlled by socialism until the 1917 Russian revolution, yet many governments were forced to target the industrial society’s abuses, as a result of which the parliament prohibited women’s underground employment e.g. “many women had worked in coal mines as "drawers" in which they pulled carts of coal from the mines with straps attached to their shoulders” (“The Industrial Revolution”). By 1914, certain new protest outlets including feminism and new work roles emerged for women. New standards and ideas brought important changes in the home (Stearns et al.). Read More