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.

Yes. All women in my family worked - either proper full time work, like nursing, clerks, teachers etc. or they had various side hustles whilst managing the household and childcare etc, but all of them worked.

The marriage bar for teaching was lifted by the education act of 1944. Many women stayed in teaching after the war, as others have noted there was a shortage of teachers and the social changes started in the war meant there was increasing demand for education. For both my grandmothers it was incredibly liberating as they could continue to work after their weddings and return after they had kids

My Nanna was born in 1900 and worked in a local factory from the age of 15 right up until her mid 40's when she gave birth to my mum (the youngest of 6 children) Grandpop didn't work much due to an injury he sustained during WW1 so without Nanna's wage the family would have starved. My Great Grandma (nanna's mum), was a seamstress working at home. My mum always worked, either part-time or , when we were old enough to be left alone, full-time.

My mother, grandmother and great grandmother all worked as did all except one auntie etc.

My gran is nearly 100 and she worked after marriage and children. My nana would be around 110 if alive, and she also worked, multiple cleaning jobs, after marriage with children. She either took the children with her or the older ones looked after the younger ones. Badly. Or sometimes they just werent looked after.

My eyes rolled so far back in my head.

Even royal women and the nobility worked since the dawn of time. Weaving and embroidery/tapestry for the lucky ones (functional tapestries, to keep warmth in)
On farms, in the home etc.

Only very few women never "worked"

She rented a flat, then we got a council house. As a child, it meant nothing to me really, but as an adult I realise how devastating it must have been for her to lose so much.

My mother worked in school dinners, school and office cleaning. DF was a policeman (pre-Thatcher so before police were well-paid). I looked after my 4 siblings before and after school from around the age of 10.

My aunt had to leave the police when she got married in the 60s and was paid a "dowry".

Both my grans worked.

One was a bit middle class and worked as a sewing teacher, even after marrying.

The other was working class and worked at a bakery.

What school? Lots of people didn't attend

Royal, aristocratic women did not weave tapestries - they were made by highly skilled weavers in specialist workshops! They might have done various crafts for fun, to show off 'feminine accomplishments' and to keep from being bored because the whole point was that they did not work. Running a big household is of course a busy 'job' but they paid a large army of servants to do most of the work.

My great grandmothers were born around 1900

one had a farm so while she didn’t “work” she was part of the workings of the farm. The other was a seamstress and had her own shop.

my grandmothers were born in the 20s and 30s. One was widowed very young with 4 children. She did various jobs like dinner lady and small shop worker with farmer GG assisting with the children.

the other did factory and cleaning work, with her housebound father overseeing her children

Yes, women have always worked. Looking further back, that work often wasn’t in the form of going out to do a job for an employer but working to produce things for sale and for the family- spinning, weaving, brewing, dairy work etc. This sort of piecework could be fitted around childcare.

The hard line we have these days between working and non-working life wasn’t such a thing. I think in many ways this reflected women’s contribution more accurately than our current tendency to see contribution only in terms of money earned for work done outside the home.

It's kind of depressing how invisible women's history is. As a pp said, 80% of women were working class and yet we don't seem to have a general awareness of how they lived.

I'm from a working class background and have also done a lot of family history research. I don't think all working class women worked but an awful lot of them did.

There seemed to have been a variety of ways of coping with childcare;
Children worked from a young age, piecework, learning Dad's trade or 'lighter' jobs in a factory
A lot of work was shift work, some parents worked opposite shifts or women doing early morning/late evening work
Multi generational living
More willingness to leave children alone, expectation of older children to look after toddlers
Not such an emphasis on school, missing altogether to work instead, children leaving at an earlier age, also expected to get themselves to school.
Family all living very close together, multiple family members in the same street

It's a patchwork of solutions in a world where 9 - 5 wasn't so common.

Both my grandmothers worked in the 40s and beyond. My maternal grandmother was the breadwinner as my grandfather was unable to work. When her oldest kids were babies, she took in loads of lodgers and did all of their washing, meals etc but that didn't bring enough money in so she had to get a few jobs in hospitality (she had no real education) working for restaurants and
hotels...she had a large family and hated leaving her children to work long hours. As each child reached 15 they then also had to go out to work and support the family. She didn't get time off with later babies, the oldest daughter and my grandfather raised them.

My paternal grandmother (and all my aunties) took in sewing and was a great dressmaker. Unfortunately, so did a lot of other Asian women at the time so it wasn't a great earner but she also helped in the family businesses to a certain extent (as did everyone over the age of 5!), all while raising 8 children.

One nan was a factory worker and then a cleaner and the other nan was a dinner lady.
Both jobs could be managed around childcare but generally they both lived close to their own brothers and sisters so would look after each others kids.

My grandmas were born in the 20s and one worked in hosiery mills, and her older neighbours looked after my dad, until he was old enough to walk himself to school and get his own tea when he got home.
The other took in washing. Her mother had taken in washing as well with 14 children of her own - she was born in 1900.

Both my Nans (born 1920s) worked once their children were at school - they were both cleaners. They both lived in Oxford where there were plenty of big houses that needed cleaning. It was off the books, cash in hand work, which is probably why records suggest far fewer women worked in the second half of the 20th century. Lots of working class women weren't officially employed.

I forgot to say as well, my maternal grandmother (and presumably her sisters, as she was the youngest) was "sent away" in the early 30s when she would have been 12/13 to work as a live in servant for a wealthy family. Her childhood friends had similar experiences, being sent to live at neighbouring homes. All unhappy experiences. The money earned was sent back home.

My DGM 1 born prob about 1900 didn't work after having DCs. My DGM2 didn't work but lived in the country, long walk to the shops, kept chickens, pig, gardened.
My DM born 1922, stopped work once DCs born. Did go back for about 10 years up to age of 60. My DM's sister worked, DGM watched DCs.

I heard a podcast about scientists in the 19th C - nearly all men but she surmised that women would be pregnant or had babies or small DCs to mind, so not much chance to do anything else.

@Fartooold

Fair play to your mum. That's survival.

(I've just finished an epic battle with my abusive ex to secure our family home, and even tho financially it has really been a nightmare, I just kept thinking, 'I need this security for the kids & me'. I can't imagine the utter stress & unfairness of what your mum had to cope with).

My grandmother was a teacher as were her sisters. They were mostly unmarried so always worked but one was a married head mistress although had no kids.

My granny taught when married as it was the war but stopped when pregnant. Restarted when her husband left her and they divorced as he paid no child support and my mums grandmother looked after her/my uncle.

My dad's mum never worked but her mum took in washing/mending. There was a bit of social mobility there so everyone was quite proud gran could not work (mining village, my grandpa got an apprenticeship which got him a job in local government).

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.

Yes, my FIL's job interview included a stage where the boss came to dinner to check his wife's hostessing skills as inviting overseas customers for dinner was part of the job. She wasnt in payroll. It was very much an adhoc thing, but he wouldnt have got the job if she hadnt been any good. Plus having the boss round for dinner kept you in line for promotion.

Unemployment was rife in the 1920s and 30s. Many jobs were insecure - eg dockers lined up each day and were picked (or not), to work. If you were involved in Unions etc you were unlikely to be picked. My grandfather was sacked in 1905 when he complained that Jewish refugees in his factory were being paid half of the going rate. My father was one of thousands who struck for months when flemish workers were employed at lower rates. (They had quickly realised that soon there would be no jobs at the full rate at all.)

All this industrial unrest meant that women worked to provide for their families. As a woman in her 20s my teacher mother ( on 3/4 men's pay) was keeping her disabled father, her blacklisted brother, her unemployed sister and brother in law. She couldn't marry and leave them as they would have been destitute. She had 2 dresses - one she wore and one was in the wash.

Not btw that women and girls were not militant themselves. The famous match girls strike of 1888 at Bryan and May was indeed largely a strike of teenage girls of Irish extraction ( whose families would have known all about famine, - the last 1879 - and destitution and the unwillingness of Government to help.)

My last headteacher told me that the first time he remembered his father (in Salford) had a job was when he was called up WW2. As a child this HD had helped his mother clean offices in the early mornings. That was the only income of the family.

My 5 aunts were all in factories at 13. ( 1902 on).

Of course they worked. Who do you did all the work in the cotton mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire in the industrial revolution? Before that, they worked in the fields, in the dairy, etc when most families had their own land to tend. Who worked in the clothes factories 50-100 years ago? Who worked in the shops, or as secretaries, etc?

Women being SAHP's no more than a temporary blip in history, either because their families were rich enough or they were lucky to live in the post war boom years of the 50s, 60s and 70s.

As for childcare, entire families lived in the same streets, so the older, retired people looked after the kids, and elder kids looked after younger ones, as part of a big community.