Did Women really always work?

[MaggieBroonofGlebeSt]

Genuine question but definitely most interested if possible in actual data not anecdotal. On most threads about SAHMs people will always say that women have always worked apart from the rare recent middle classes who are an outlier.
Is that true? For example I was reading Call the Midwife; none of the women seem to have a job despite being very working class. Reading old books I never read about married women with kids from any background who worked.
In my family I don't know of any married women who worked but fair enough, they were generally wellish off.
All that is anecdotal though!
If women did work, who looked after their kids? I honestly don't see how it would be possible for most women with children.

That's not what people mean when they say 'women have always worked' though; at least on Mumsnet. They mean a paid job, which is what I'm interested in because I don't think it's true. I think even working class women didn't generally work once they had kids if they had a husband in a paid job (see - Ma Broon for example, husband works in the docks, she's at home).
However I am happy to hear the argument that I'm wrong.

Yes but often part time and don't seem to have paid their NI stamp a lot of the time. I work in benefits for older people and we get a huge amount of older ladies with very low state pensions perhaps indicating they haven't worked much or worked part time or opted out of paying their stamp. or it could just seem like there's a lot to me because this group of ladies are more likely to need help to claim pension credit etc.

My nan was working class. She worked and had 8 children. She would have been working from about 1935.

She did early morning factory cleaning and late night factory cleaning which added up to a lot of hours, so before her husband went to work and after he got home. She said working class men were often a bit more hands at home on that people realise.

Her mum did similar. I dont know any further than that.

I do know that the dairy income in small holdings in the past was considered the womans income.

Here is a good article on the subject. One point is to remember that 80% of women in the 19th C were working class When were women allowed to work? A history of women in work — Future of Work Hub

Many women always worked for pay but not in what you might think of as a modern job - many worked in some way from home doing piecework before the Industrial Revolution, or worked in other domestic settings like taking in laundry or in family businesses. A modern 'workplace/9-5' setting is not really what most women who worked for pay would have done. Many traditionally 'female' crafts would have been very valuable before mechanisation of clothing production, for example. Also always bear in mind that most of what you read from the past was written by very wealthy people, and is not going to be a good representation of the reality of ordinary women's lives.

My Nan worked (born 1909) and when we weren't in school, we'd go to work with her (can't remember where my mum was but she wasn't around much) and play in the car park all day or farmed out to friends or relatives.

But from 8ish onwards we were left alone at home.

Growing up in the 60s and 70s hardly any of the women I knew worked after having children, some of them gave up work as soon as they were married. Yes, some went back to work when the kids were older but it definitely wasn't 'the norm'. The only woman on my street who wasn't a 'housewife' was the one who was divorced.

My father (very middle class) didn't want Mum to return to teaching when my sister when to school in the 1980s because people would think he wasn't successful enough to keep a wife.

Historically working class women and children always did various types of paid work. Piecework, servants, wet nurse, making and packing matchs, working in a laundry, spinning were all done by women. In big industry some jobs were considered male and some female.

My grandma (born in 1907) was a teacher, DH's grandma (born a few years later) worked in the post office.

some women worked because the husband drank or gambled and she needed the extra income it wasn't always "pin" money but survival. but growing up in the 70s and 80s all my Aunts worked and had children usually kids were babysat by family or friends.

And my mum (born 1942) was a nurse.

didn't female teachers have to stop working when they married or is that a myth?

I think the ban on married women working was a big reason why so many women did not work outside the home. It applied to nursing, teaching, and the Civil Service.

I suspect that women who were part of small family businesses also worked, e.g. in grocery shops or bakeries.

As others have said, there were a lot of dressmaking/sewing activities that women did in the home. This was usually cash in hand and so outside the not recorded under income tax or NI payments.

My grandmother worked. She worked doing deliveries for the grocers store and taking orders on her bicycle. The original deliveroo.

I think it's a myth? My grandma definitely carried on working after she was married and after having kids. Maybe it was just sort of expected?

Running a small shop, going out cleaning, taking in a lodger or boarder if they had room, seasonal work such as fruit picking or hop picking.

Middle class women might not do paid work, but there was an expectation that they would do voluntary work - running a girls' club or mother and baby club, visiting the sick or housebound, organising bazaars and concerts to raise money for good causes, for example.

My Great Grandmother was a seamstress, she WFH making and mending clothes while raising her eight children.

My Grandmother worked part time in a shop while her neighbours looked after her children.

My Mother had to leave her profession when she married my father but returned to it when I went to full time school. I had a front door key at 9 years old, scary thought now but very usual in the 70's.

My grandmother - born around 1930 - worked around her children. She did my grandfather's accounts and also made dresses which she sold

As others have mentioned, a lot of working class women would have done piecework at home - sewing, crochet, lacework. The book, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists talks about the paid working done by of the female characters. In my family my Grandma in rural Ireland would have taking in mending (my Grandad was a tailor so they had a couple of sewing machines at hone). My Grandma in the North of England worked on the buses and then in a factory - she was there from the 50's until her retirement.

I think it changed during WW2 as there weren’t going to be enough teachers. Both my grandmas got married during the war and continued teaching. For one of them I’m pretty sure it was the change in the rules that led to her getting married (her teacher’s salary supported her younger siblings). Both returned to full time teaching after having their boomer kids (my parents).

I think it might have depended on the headteacher. I have definitely read social history experiences where it's talked about.
My MIL (European) had to leave her teaching job after she got married. This would have been in the 70s.

Working class roots in the East Midlands.

Paternal grandmother, born in 1878, was in service as a housemaid until she married in 1901. Then she looked after her niece until she had her own children and then died when her younger child was only 12.

Her sisters were also in service. One emigrated, one died very young and the other was widowed in WWI and gave up work to look after her child and her widowed father.

Maternal grandmother, born in 1892, never worked. She was 'at home' helping her mother, until she married in 1915. Grandad was a printer's compositor, but they only had one child and Grandma had an inheritance from her maternal grandfather, who had done quite well for himself as a bookmaker.

Grandma's sister was what we would now call a social worker, until she married in her 40s. She left work to get married in 1945.

My mother, born in 1920, left school at 14 and went straight to work. She married in 1940, but because it was wartime, she was able to continue working. In fact, she had to carry on to support the war effort. She left work when my father came out of the forces in 1946 and was then a trailing spouse who never worked again.

When I was growing up in the 1960s, all the mums in our street were at home. One did some cleaning to fit round school hours and family responsibilities and another went back to work as a tracer in a drawing office when her younger child went to senior school, but that was it. The husbands had factory jobs in the main, my dad was a rep, my friend's dad was a telephonist on permanent nights and they all supported their families on one wage.

On the other side of the family, one woman was widowed in 1939 when she was in her very early twenties with a small child. She went back to work in a factory, while her aunt looked after the child and actually continued to work in the factory until she reached retirement age, with a short break after she re-married and had another child. Her sister in law also worked, despite having two children, because her husband had had an accident and could not work.

you are probably right it was likely the "done thing" to find a nice husband and not need to work.

My granny was a cleaner - cleaned wealthy people's houses. When her kids were little she would take them with her, but once at school would clean when they were at school. It was quite a long bus trip to get across London to work. Also her older child looked after the younger when needed.

Other granny was 'in service' from aged 11 but stopped working when she got married

There have always been some women who didn't need to work (though they would likely be doing all sorts of volunteering/supporting husband on top of housework and kids). There have also always been women who worked even after marriage. However, the nature of that work changes through the centuries and it is not always visible - both because of the nature of record keeping, and because of their legal status ie: not having their own finances. Having a side hustle is not a new thing and there was always someone doing laundry, home based crafts, brewing (when it was ale, less so when beer came in), selling eggs, child care.