This is fairly inaccurate, as well. Paid work was certainly lower, but prior to the Industrial Revolution merely putting clothes on your back was a fairly labor-intensive task. One estimate puts it at 10 spinners to supply one person on a loom, and this work was often done by women at home, and was generally paid work in the Middle Ages. A British census in the mid 1800s, which over-represents unpaid work in domestic services as laborers (I’ll let you decide if that counts as women being part of the economy or not), still had about 50% of women in the census as employed.
Comment on Remember the good old days?
thepresentpast@lemm.ee 4 weeks agoI mean that’s just not true. I thought everyone learned about how WWII offered women the opportunity in mast numbers for the first time because of the crucial roles that were left open by the men who were off to fight. That’s what sparked the transition toward women’s right to work at all. Before that, there was no such right. Unless you are counting cooking and cleaning at home, or tending the family farm, as “work”, but I don’t believe that’s what people mean when we are referring to “a woman’s right to work”.
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
thepresentpast@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
I am responding specifically to the original point that the 50s represented a time where women somehow worked less than ever before. That’s just not true. I am not arguing against the idea that women performed valuable labor roles.
werty@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Cooking, cleaning and tending the family farm are all examples of work. As are making, washing and mending clothes. Teaching, nursing, bookkeeping, sex work and running a large household (or working in one) are also jobs. Helping to run the family business, whether a farm, a bakery, a church or a blacksmith, is working. Women did not just sit around embroidering things, and those who did sold their embroidery for money. You should also realise that all the men going to the office/factory every day is a recent development. My grandmothers both held gainful employment before world war 2.
thepresentpast@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Sure, but women still did all of those activities in the 50s. That didn’t change. And none of it is the same as holding a job. There were a small array of activities available to us, and we were expected to give most of them up upon marriage or at the latest pregnancy. And you couldn’t have a bank account or keep your earnings in any meaningful way. So the 50s were no different from the 30s or 10s in that regard, EXCEPT that women were entering the paid workforce in greater numbers than ever before, which is the opposite of your original point to which I am responding.
werty@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
You seem to define work as holding a paid job outside of the home. I disagree with that definition.
thepresentpast@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
No, I am arguing with the fact that you said the that the 50s were a “blip” of non-work in women’s working history, when in fact, all the same types of work that had been available to women for hundreds of years continued to be available to them.
Yes, there was a reactionary advertising push toward the Domestic Housewife image that happened in the 50s, but that was a direct response to the fact that in the 50s women were transitioning from home work to society work.
Objection@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
That’s the narrative, but it’s centered around middle class white women.
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