"History That Stands Still": Women's Work in the European Past

Bennett, Judith M.; Wiesner, Merry E.; Howell, Martha; Charles, Lindsey; Duffin, Lorna; Hanawalt, Barbara A.; Dillard, Heath; Nicholas, David; Otis, Leah Lydia

doi:10.2307/3180153

Cited by 51 publications

(16 citation statements)

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“…Does women's strong representation among the resistance suggest that they were particularly restive or that they were selected for oppression? We agree with Bennett (2010) that the compulsory service clause was particularly oppressive to women: infringing their geographical and occupational mobility, inhibiting their working casually by the day, and pressing them into annual service. The results are manifest in the relative trajectories of our two wage series and their failure to converge.…”

Section: The Black Death the European Marriage Pattern And Western supporting

confidence: 65%

The Wages of Women in England, 1260–1850

Humphries¹,

Weisdorf²

2015

J. Econ. Hist.

167

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This paper presents two wage-series for unskilled English women workers 1260-1850, one based on daily wages and one on the daily remuneration implied in annual contracts. The series are compared with each other and with evidence for did not share the post-Black Death "golden age" and so offer little support for a "girl-powered" economic breakthrough; and second that during the industrial revolution, women who were unable to work long hours lost ground relative to men and to women who could work full-time and fell increasingly adrift from any "High Wage Economy." T he trends in men's wages in the centuries after the Black Death are now well accepted. As shown in Figure 1, real wages rose for nearly a century and a half, fell to a plateau in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and then improved slightly by 1850. These trends have been held to track wellbeing, account for demographic transformations,

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Section: The Black Death the European Marriage Pattern And Western supporting

confidence: 65%

The Wages of Women in England, 1260–1850

Humphries¹,

Weisdorf²

2015

J. Econ. Hist.

167

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“…In a business based on a household, it is quite possible that accounts were kept by a woman, but we have no direct evidence of who actually did this kind of work". It may be that the employment of women in routine accounting was a relatively unchanging story, a "history that stands still" as has been claimed for the history of women's work in general (Bennett, 1988). The structure of alternative periodisations would also be conditioned by the deployment of various theoretical frameworks, from focuses on modes of production, the shifting division of labour, property, consumption or patriarchal ideologies.…”

Section: Such Responsibilities May Have Diminished Under Capitalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accounting histories of women: beyond recovery?

Walker

2008

Accounting, Auditing &Amp; Accountability Journal

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Purpose -An assessment is offered of the contribution made by accounting histories of women produced since 1992 and the current state of knowledge production in this subject area.Design/methodology/approach -the study is based on a review of published sources on accounting history and women's, gender and feminist history.Findings -Whereas feminist historians and historians of gender boast substantial advances in research and transformative impacts on the wider discipline of history, similar momentum is less evident in accounting history. It is argued that over the past 15 years scholarship has remained substantially in the 'recovery' phase, has not 'defamiliarized' the sub-field and is yet to engage with developments in feminist and gender historiography which offer regenerative potential.Research limitations/implications -The paper argues that sex and gender differentiation persist in both the past and the present and their study should feature large on the accounting history research agenda.Originality/value -Core themes in feminist and gender history are explored with a view to identifying research questions for accounting historians. These themes include the oppression and subordination of women, the public-private divide, restoring women to history, devising new periodisations, investigating socio-cultural relations, and the construction of identities.

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“…According to this perspective, it was not until later that there occurred a gradual exclusion of women, be that as a consequence of 'male bonding,' the spread of capitalism, or the Industrial Revolution. Other historians have stressed the continuities of the gender-based division of labor since the twelfth century, which placed women in the domestic sphere or in low-skilled, low-status, and low-paying occupations (Bennett, 1988). Most historians emphasize the fluctuating boundaries between men's and women's work, which are continuously redefined and renegotiated (Honeyman and Goodman, 1998).…”

Section: Work and Gendermentioning

confidence: 98%

Work, History of

Ehmer

2015

International Encyclopedia of the Social &Amp; Behavioral Sciences

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The article brings together two themes. First, it discusses the history of the concept of work, from the philosophers of Antiquity and the Judeo-Christian tradition to modern Western thought. Second, the article concentrates on the history of work as practice. In doing so, three perspectives are employed, which predominate in the historiography of work from its very beginning until present: work as production and application of technology, work as economic activity, and work as culture. Finally, the article discusses the relation between work and gender as a field in which concepts and practices of work are closely interrelated.The concept of work designates certain human activities; however, those activities that are considered to be work and those that are not, vary among different cultures and epochs. Each historical society has its own definition of work, and a variety of different conceptions are juxtaposed to one another within each society. How work is defined is closely associated with the value placed on it, and this in turn is connected with workers' positions in society. The history of work must therefore bring together two themes: the history of the meaning of work and the history of work as a practice. The relation between gender and work cuts across these two themes and shows how strongly they are connected.

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"History That Stands Still": Women's Work in the European Past

Cited by 51 publications

References 0 publications

The Wages of Women in England, 1260–1850

The Wages of Women in England, 1260–1850

Accounting histories of women: beyond recovery?

Work, History of

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