The rise of industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century completely the changed the face of production in Western Europe it led to a decrease in small scale artisanal and agricultural work and was replaced by much larger factories. In preindustrial times, the work that women did was valued similarly to that of men but the move towards mass industrialization worked to marginalize the value of women’s labor in those settings. The structural changes in production and the rise of mass scale industrialization worked to not only to change how their labor was valued but also created deep social problems connected to these changes as argued by Louise Otto and Julie-Victoire Daubié
Nineteenth century women labor leaders quickly realized that the realities of industrial life did not reflect well on their gender because their work would never be valued the same as men’s. One such case of this are the cases cited by Julie-Victoire Daubié who mentions that women workers have it much harder because they are “excluded from professional schools and overwhelmed by the responsibilities of motherhood” has led many of them to “vice or suicide.” Furthermore, both Louise Otto as well Laura Frader argued that the social changes led by women’s role in the industrial economy had powerful repercussions. Otto mentions that women took the brunt of the changes in society and that they were unduly punished while men worry about “safeguarding of the moral dignity of man, the principle of the family and even civilization itself” Similarly, Frader focuse on the role that sexuality played in industrial power relations where women were not just the target of unequal pay and treatment but even of sexual harassment and violence which was related to worries about the “dubious” morality of female workers that reduced them to nothing more than prostitutes who had to be saved. Sexuality is a very powerful part of society and the entering of women into industrial labor did a fair bit to change the status quo and not necessarily for the better given both primary and secondary accounts.
Bibliography
DiCaprio, Lisa, and Merry E. Wiesner. 2001. Lives and voices: sources in European women's history. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Frader, Laura L. Doing Capitalism's Work: Women in the Western European Industrial Economy. na, 1998.
