The importance of ideology: the shift to factory production and its effect on women's employment opportunities in the English textile industries, 1760–1850

Minoletti, Paul

doi:10.1017/s026841601300012x

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Even if machine spinning eventually became a man's job when the heavier mules were introduced, women and children dominated the early factory workforce. According to Stanley Chapman “[T]he cotton mills of the Arkwright era typically employed about 200 to 250 people, mostly unskilled juveniles and females who proved easy to train and manage” (1992, p. viii; see also Minoletti 2011). Such work did however require commitment and regularity and is perhaps best understood as competitive with annual service, especially as some evidence suggests that younger unmarried women became a particularly important component of the workforce as the nineteenth century wore on.…”

Section: The Era Of Industrializationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Wages of Women in England, 1260–1850

Humphries¹,

Weisdorf²

2015

J. Econ. Hist.

168

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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 Era Of Industrializationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Wages of Women in England, 1260–1850

Humphries¹,

Weisdorf²

2015

J. Econ. Hist.

168

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Any possible male strength advantage due to an increase in the size of machinery cannot explain the complete absence of women by this date, since mules ranging in size from 108 to 256 were in use, so even if the largest was beyond the physical capability of women, the smallest certainly should not have been. 59 Minoletti did not document how the gender division of labour in mule spinning remained relatively stable and heavily skewed toward men throughout the 1788-92 period, prior to the factory system. In addition, Minoletti contends that women could operate mules with spindle counts of 108 and possibly more.…”

Section: Gender Piece-rates and Pay (I) The Gender Division Of Labourmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Creation of a Gendered Division of Labor in Mule Spinning: Evidence from Samuel Oldknow, 1788–1792

Tertzakian

2024

Enterp. Soc.

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The spinning mule was one of the most important innovations in the rise of the British cotton industry during the Industrial Revolution. First introduced in 1780, the mule’s diffusion overturned the traditional division of labor in spinning from women to men. This article produces new insights on this process by examining the business records of Samuel Oldknow, a pioneer of fine cotton manufacturing and an early adopter of the technology during the understudied transition period of the late 1780s and early 1790s, when the machine was still hand powered before the factory system. It demonstrates that strength was the most important factor in shaping the gendered division of labor in mule spinning. Although no direct gender-pay discrimination is evident, men’s earnings were higher because of the physical effort required to operate the larger mules that more easily produced the finest yarns that secured the highest piece rates. Crucially, this shift of the gender division of labor predated factory mule spinning.

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“…In both the cotton and woollen industries girls' and boys' wages were similar until age 15, then pay for females fell rapidly behind. This gender wage gap has been variously attributed to different physical strengths (Burnette 2008 pp.138-53, 172-85), protection of male jobs by trades unions (Clark 1995, p.134) and women being denied access to supervisory roles or jobs which required recruitment, payment or supervision of assistants because of a prevailing ideology which rejected female authority over other workers (Minoletti 2013 2 . 2 E c o no m ic w or t h of c h il d r e n to th e i r f am il i e s However, economic value to the family, and hence treatment, will depend on 'lifetime' (defined as time within the familial home) contribution to the household (Anderson 1971).…”

Section: 1 Re L a T Iv E E A R Ni N G Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender bias in nineteenth-century England: Evidence from factory children

Horrell

Oxley

2016

Economics & Human Biology

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Gender bias against girls in nineteenth-century England has received much interest but establishing its existence has proved difficult. We utilise data on heights of 16,402 children working in northern textile factories in 1837 to examine whether gender bias was evident. Current interpretations argue against any difference. Here our comparisons with modern height standards reveal greater deprivation for girls than for boys. Discrimination is measured in girls' height-for-age score (HAZ) falling eight standard errors below boys' at ages 11, 11.5 and 12 years of age, capturing the very poor performance of factory girls. But this result cannot be taken at face value. We query whether modern standards require adjustment to account for the later timing of puberty in historical populations and develop an alternative. We also test the validity of the age data, considering whether parents were more prone to lie about the ages of their daughters, and question whether the supply of girls was fundamentally different from that of boys. We conclude that neither proposition is justified. Disadvantage to girls remains, although its absence amongst younger children precludes an indictment of culturally founded gender bias. The height data must remain mute on the source of this discrimination but we utilise additional information to examine some hypotheses: occupational sorting, differential susceptibility to disease, poorer nutrition for girls, disproportionate stunting from the effects of nutritional deprivation, and type and amount of work undertaken. Of these we suggest that girls had to do arduous physical labour in the home alongside their factory work. The only (unsubstantiated) alternative is that girls were more likely than boys to be put into factory work below the legal age limit. Both represent forms of gender bias.

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The importance of ideology: the shift to factory production and its effect on women's employment opportunities in the English textile industries, 1760–1850

Cited by 8 publications

References 21 publications

The Wages of Women in England, 1260–1850

The Wages of Women in England, 1260–1850

The Creation of a Gendered Division of Labor in Mule Spinning: Evidence from Samuel Oldknow, 1788–1792

Gender bias in nineteenth-century England: Evidence from factory children

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