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.

I know in my family all women worked, but I come from a very working class family from East London.

My Great Nan worked from when she was 12 and when she had my Nan in 1930 her neighbour used to look after my Nan and then she had to pay someone to look after her. My Nan and her siblings were evacuated during the war so my great Nan could carry on working. Then my Nan worked all her life - she got her first job at 14 and worked until she was 70.

so yes, women have always worked or had to do something for money (take in washing etc). I think it’s just always been a case of the lucky ones that didn’t have to.

Well it depends upon when you are talking about, post ww2 is very different to pre 1900 and pre industrial review is different again.

Then you need to consider class and area. Fishing communities, mining communities, mill towns, agricultural communities, potteries etc would all have been different.

If it is post war that interests you I can highly recommend the book "Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes" for an insight into the lives of a variety of women.

Black women always worked, yes.

Post Industrial Revolution, working class women still worked because they had to earn a wage. If they were married they wouldn't be able to raise children on one wage.

Children also worked - they were small enough to crawl under the machines and fix them.

The Married Women's Property Act of 1870 was brought in for many reasons, but one was that it stopped your husband drinking your wages as well as his own.

Pre IR, you know the term "spinster" was for a single woman who made her own living by spinning and weaving etc, I consider it a badge of pride when I get called that.

Upper middle class men often didn't work either, family money etc

Imagine having to look after kids, do all the housework, cooking and what not AND be forced to skivvy doing low paid, low value, grunt work, just to make ends meet. It must have been an absolutely miserable existence.

Women have always had a raw deal. We would have loved better jobs if needs be, but women weren't allowed to do them.

Oh and housework is work and should absolutely be paid a fair wage to do it.

Yes, mine too. (Born 1863). She also looked after sick people, especially children, and laid out the dead. She had been employed as a nursemaid until marrying my GGF, a police sergeant.
Maternal grandmother didn’t work outside the home, though was a pupil teacher until married (c 1916) . She married a farmer, so responsible for feeding the farm workers as well as the family, running the dairy for profit with the help of a dairy maid.
Paternal GP was a tailoress in the City, continued through WWI ( making officer uniforms) . Stopped work when GF returned from the trenches, to raise the family.
DM trained as a teacher, worked throughout the war, was fired because married once ‘the men’ returned as per PP, but managed to be reinstated as there was a shortage in London. Gave up work for five years when pregnant, but returned when I started school. Worked full time until about 45, then three days a week.

But when I was interviewed for graduate traineeships in 1975, I was always asked about future plans ( that is, was I going to vanish as soon as I found a husband) and when I gave my mother as an example/ exemplar of a working woman, It was seen as being fairly atypical.

As for raising children - people may have had big families so that the children could work and bring money in (and look after them in their old age)? And that may have been true of rural and industrial households I guess. I'm talking about Victorian times or up until the 40s in some places. While aristocrats palmed their children off for other people to raise...

It depends who and when and what work you're talking about.

Legislation through the 19th century means there's increasing control over the employment of women and children in the factory acts and the 1842 Mines Act and others. The Mines Act prohibited women and boys under 10 from working underground, but it wasn't immediately effectively enforced, and there were still pit-head lassies (wearing trousers - shock!) into the 30th century.

Other legislation affected who was available for work, such as the introduction of compulsory education. Then you get areas like agriculture where whole families would be involved at harvest, though they may not all have been paid, particularly if family

A lot of professions barred women until the later 19th and into the 20th centuries, or restricted the roles they could do. These were the areas were marriage bars were likely to be in place, the last of which went in 1973 in an area of the civil service. However, whether or not women continued to work on marriage also depended on how much social pressure applied; a lot of women were still expected to give up work on marriage into the '80s, even if there was no official bar in place, and if not then, then on the birth of the first baby. Some employers, such as some banks, still had forms asking your husband to sign that he agreed to you working after marriage - into the 1980s.

Not everyone did quit work; my grandmother worked as a teacher through the '50s and '60s. Marriage bars depended on the LEA and weren't unuversal. Her own children were safely away at boarding school in term time, and I think she did it more to use her brain than for the money. She had been to Cambridge (before they awarded degrees to women,) and I suspect that had she been of my generation, she'd have done a PhD. (And had my father not been born earlier in 1939, she might have spent the war at Bletchley, where something like 75% of the staff were women.)

My great aunts on that side unusually had some sort of higher education; three married and did no paid work after that, AFAIK. The other two never married and had professional careers. Virginia Nicolson's book Singled Out is good on the interwar generation of women and work- many women of that age never married because they lost men in the war.

On the other side, my grandmother worked in a factory until marriage and didn't work again after the war (when her eldest child was born) - she had dependent children until retirement age.

Much of women's work wouldn't have been easily visible. Taking in piecework, laundry, helping in family businessesband so on might never have shown up on official records.

I'm not sure when PAYE came in (and can't be arsed to look it up just now) though NI payments presumably date from the introduction of the welfare state post WW2. When we were clearing my father's office after his death, there was a blank tax return for about 1972-3 - one of the sections asked about dependent adult daughters.

But whatever rules were in place at whatever time in whatever employment area in whatever class, some women have always needed to earn money.

I think very poor people did, but like PP have said then it could be that the grandparents or the older siblings did the childcare. I don't think all working class did, or if they did it may have been more doing work that fitted around their children. Still now in many cultures the women work, but the grandmothers look after the grandchildren and probably in many cases probably do the cooking as well. I'm not sure if that seems like a nice idea or a rather shit one tbh! Maybe the childcare is easier as you can give them back to the parents when you're the grandparent

My Mum was born in 1930 and started work in 1944 as a weaver in a textile mill. She worked until I was born and returned part time when I was 3, going back to full time when I went to school at 4. She then worked full time until 1990 when she was 60 and received her pension.

Two elderly ladies who shared a house in the village took care of me when Mum was working and I was not at school.

Mum was on her feet all day at work and used to keep the house spotless, much more houseproud than me! All that walking at work and housework must have served her well as she died in May one week short of her 93rd birthday and still doing her own cooking and cleaning without any help. I think they were much tougher then.

This. Plus there weren’t nurseries everywhere, even if they could have afforded them, and many women did not have family close by to help. I don’t know why it’s so often assumed that just about everyone had a handy aunt or granny down the road. My DM didn’t, and neither did her sisters.

Until my Dm went back to work when I was 14 there was never any spare cash for anything. She couldn’t go back earlier because there were 2 younger siblings to think of - 4 and 6 years younger than me - and only when I was 14 did she think it OK for them to come home from school on their own and be reasonably safe in the house until she got home at around 6.

My dad was born in 1966;my grandmother went back to work when he was only 6 weeks old;she use to drop him to relatives and go to work.

This stopped when my dad got into year 5 when he was nearly 10 (October birthday) and was given a key;it was a 30 minute walk to school for him.

My dads an only child so had no siblings for company after school either.

I think it depends on class, era, attitudes to child rearing
Victorian
MC- didn't work
WC- worked (would have had to)
Edwardian
MC- didn't work
WC- worked
Wars I & II
MC- worked
WC- worked
50's & 60's
MC- didn't often work
WC- 50/50
70's onwards
MC- 50/50
WC- starting to stay home with children more as childcare costs increase, more awareness of leaving children unattended
90's- present
MC- most return to some form of work
WC- benefits system gives women a choice about whether they return to work or not

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER correct me if I'm wrong but it's only a quite recent thing that women had thought children couldn't be left alone. Prior to this it would have been maybe grandmothers but more generally being part of a community which was the safety net. Even in Italy in the 70s and 80s, kids had a two hour lunch break and were expected to walk home from school and mostly look after themselves in that time. Keeping an eye on your child at all times until their 15 is a relatively new idea.

I was born in 1961 I’ve always worked even after having children. Two of my great aunts born around WW1 worked as nurses throughout their lives, one of them was an unmarried mum so her parents raised her child while she worked. My mum was born in 1940 she worked part time after I was born, one aunt born 1936 was a landlady of a pub she never had children another aunt was born about 1938 was a teacher she never had children, one of my grandmothers born in 1918 ran a bnb with my grandfather the other one didn’t work as my grandfather worked on a fishing trawler so was away from home a lot, many of the wives did work in fish processing though.

A significant portion of women always worked. What that looked like really depended on their individual circumstances and the time period. The way we think about children has changed dramatically since the industrial revolution. Child labour was only banned in the UK in 1933 (meaning anyone under 14 weren’t legally allowed to work). Free primary education was implemented in 1891 and free secondary education (up to 14) was rolled out in 1918. However, these laws were poorly enforced and it took a long time for social norms to catch up. Generally, children were considered independent at a very early age and we saw the tail end of that into the 80s. It wasn’t uncommon for primary school age kids to walk miles to school and back by themselves in the 70s/80s. Even if their mother was home. WW2 also caused a huge amount of change very quickly in the UK, but that’s probably a whole other post in itself haha

@Fawful

You're incorrect that the Marriage Bar was an anomaly. I'm not sure what country you're referring to but it was certainly a Europe-wide practice, albeit with differences in application and duration. It was not only in Britain & Ireland.

Beyond the actual legislation, cultural mores & practices certainly did give rise to an acceptance of women being expected to stay at home with a primary focus on being a wife & mother. What we are discussing here is the extent that some women still worked outside the home & the nature of that work.

That's an incredible generalisation - and I'm unsure your categorisation works either.

I grew up in the 80's my mum didn't work and neither did any of my friends mums.

The mums did the the housework/child rearing and the dad's provided financial.

I was aware of women who work though, my school was largely female teachers and the local shop was owned by a women.

I remember in the 90's when the working tax credits and child care tax came in. The idea was that two income families were supported by supplemented child care costs and that low income working families were better off than people on benefits. It was a fantastic system that helped low income families. Except that almost immediately house prices soared and the cost of living rose. And here we are now.

In some areas around many English women looked after the children and home whilst the husband worked. I was advised by family speaking of the windrush time that often these women may work for a limited time in the year to earn additional money for family holidays. This was at a time when overseas workers came to the country to fill empty jobs in hospitals, care homes etc.

And I think it changed back when men came home from war, women were actively encouraged to give up work.

Working class women have always worked and started quite young, I think my Nana started on her 13th birthday. That was in a woolen mill and as a child she wasn't actually employed by the mill but would run errands for the workers and learn to weave and the weavers would give them pocket money.

Eventually someone would retire drop dead and the child would take over that loom.

I think there was a bit of a status symbol to not working outside the home, it meant your husband was doing well.

And wives had a part in their husband's success, the phenomena of the boss coming to dinner was alive and well in the 1970s.

My Grandmother (my mother's mother) didn't work from when she got married but then she was widowed before the age of 40, because of her age she didn't get a full widow's pension but was expected to work, this would have been in 1961 or 62.

So she always worked in my lifetime, until she was 60.

Woman have always worked - not always for money.
Middle class, lower class and often upper class.
Upper class women had housemaids but usually did charity work, sewing, flower displays etc.
My ancestors like many were on small farms so women grew vegetables, reared calves for meat, milked cows (sold butter), did most of the child care, all of the clothes making, (sewing, knitting, mending) had hens for eggs and sometimes sold eggs, drove mobs of cattle on horse back, tended to horses, prepared rabbits, sheep, fish, chooks for eating, gathered berries and made jam, helped other women giving birth, took neighbours' children in at times due to illness in family, operated a telephone exchange from home, watched out for enemy planes flying over head (ready to report), taught their children by correspondance, taught their children house hold skills like cooking and milking and were always on land titles with their husbands or by themselves.
My family always gave great respect to the women for survival and prosperity of the family. Men were expected to behave like gentlemen - no swearing, drinking, no exposing women to hard or bloody farm work (like digging, castrating, using poisons, etc). The woman could ask for assistance in the house and men presented cleaned up for the evening meal. There seemed to be joint money and decision making (though not much money at all for anyone).
There is equal kudos given to past older woman and men by the present generation. As in, the women's work was of equal importance.

Working class Grandmother was widowed at a young age. She worked as a cleaner to provide for her five children. Three hours in the morning from 5am to 8am and two hours in the evening from 5pm to 7pm. She did this for thirty years.

Middle class Grandmother never worked. Grandfather had a good job and was an excellent provider.

I think so, yes. Perhaps they weren't miners or manual labourers but certainly worked in mills, factories, shops etc. My great great grandmother worked in the mills in Yorkshire. My grandma went to university in the 1920s and opened her own pharmacy. My mum was a social worker from the 1970s onwards. I have never known a SAHM in my entire life.

My grandmother, who would be 101 now, worked in a bank during the late 30s/early 40s. I'm not sure if she worked when her children were small (they moved around a lot due to my grandfathers job), but in the 60s/70s/80s, she was working in secretarial roles. I attended her retirement party, I imagine as my own mother was working that day!

My own mother worked a series of different jobs while we were small in the 70s/80s/90s, from shop work through to a print house. She was great at her job in the print house and the boss wanted to train her up in computerised stuff but she thought she was far too old and that the suggestion was ridiculous. This must have been when she was about 50 so not ancient by any means!