Working Women in History

[CKDexterHaven]

I was thinking about the way history is taught, and even the way feminism is taught, and how it erases the work of working class women from the story. The narrative seems to go that women first got exposed to the world of work during the two world wars and then the sexual revolution of the 1960s was the first time women got to go out into the world of work. What is really meant is that women started to work in the middle-class professions and skilled working-class trades that they had been disbarred from prior to the twentieth century.

I've read that women do the majority of the world's work today because the majority of that work was gruntwork. It was ever thus. Not only have women done domestic work and service but they worked down mines, they worked in mills and factories, they worked as street hawkers, they nursed plague victims, they gutted fish, they picked crops, they sifted brick-dust, they collected street manure, they worked as bouncers ... all back-breaking, hard, physical, unpleasant labour.

I think the 'women started working in the twentieth century' narrative gives rise to the idea that women were delicate, sheltered, maternal creatures kept by chivalrous, bread-winning men and maybe it would be better for women if things went back that way. It also gives rise to the idea that all society's ills are caused by working women either stealing men's jobs or neglecting the family home when, in reality, not many women could afford to be just housewives. You also get men like Billy Connolly moaning about how manhole covers should never be called personhole covers because women's libbers never want to do the dirty jobs like working down a sewer, ignoring the fact that women have always done and still do a lot of the dirty work.

Any other examples of the jobs women have done in history that break down the myth of the delicate, cushy life of kept women?

mexican - I think the 'ebb and flow' bit is not well taught, too. I've come across people who are actually offended if you say the status of women was better in some respect further back in the past, and that we've not just become steadily more liberated.

I have had a lot of discussions with American blokes who are somehow convinced that the US is enormously more progressive and feminist than anywhere else ever, and the trifling issue of abortion rights is a tiny side issue ... they really did not like to hear that any backwards earlier times might actually have been better for women! And I'm sure we do the same in the UK on whatever our achilles heel is.

The thing about the narrative of steady progress towards liberation is that it becomes another stick to beat feminists with. Because it's so easy to say 'oh, you're going too far now, how can you care about x when awful thing y is happening?' To which the answer is, obviously, that progress happens in leaps and bounds (duh).

It's interesting that women are more prominent in history books now than 20 yrs who though. At one point it really was as if history had only happened to men, with the odd Queen and Joan of Arc thrown in for good measure.
I was delighted to find a book about female artists from the renessanse until present day, because when I studied cultural history none of them were talked about. Very important step that I hope will be redressed. It's not an aberration in the world, not a curiosity that women have achieved and contributed! Women have sort of been edited out, and that impression must be corrected.
I find it amusing when people say "feminism gone too far". To me feminism is about equal rights and opportunities, and to say that can ever go to far is an oxymoron.

There's still a huge bias, though.

I have never taught an undergraduate class without having to go over the 'myth of women in history' stuff. And there's still a need to run 'women's writing' and 'women's history' courses alongside 'regular writing' and 'regular history'. You still get complaints if you teach 'too many' women, and 'too many' might mean as few as 1/4 the number of men.

Looking at test questions from OCR for my period of history, for A Level, 12 out of 18 questions ask you to write about a man or men, mentioned by name in the question. One asks you to write about a man and a woman. Three ask you to write about a woman (Elizabeth !), and two are thematic.

This isn't inevitable. There could have been easy questions on Matilda or Margaret of Anjou, for starters! But the major problem is that, while a good teacher might be able to teach those modules and bring in plenty about women, a bad one (or one who is dealing with a class who are struggling) will have to fall back on heavily male-dominated political history to get the marks.

OCR link, if anyone's interested. Needless to say, it's highly class-biased too. www.ocr.org.uk/Images/72188-unit-f961-british-history-period-studies-option-a-medieval-and-early-modern-1035-to-1642-specimen.pdf

What's the title of the book about women artists turbo? I'd like to read it.

This thread is really interesting. I've always been annoyed by the language I hear used to describe women's roles in the past; a man who worked the land is a farmer. A woman who works the land is a farmer's wife, for example.

TeWi, the book is called Women Artists, an illustrated history, by Nancy G. Heller. Third edition is from 1997.

It is shameful though that you have to teach women's history as something "extra". A footnote to the "proper" history as recorded by men. Weird, and important to challenge.

Silencing women is hot stuff still. Here in Norway a church community which has had female ministers for over 50 yrs have just decreed that women are not to teach or speak in congregations where men are present. Happily there was public outcry, but that someone Even thought that this was a-ok is mind boggling.

I have that book turbonerd, it's great!

Exactly squishy!

Thanks just put it on my wishlist, also spotted a '13 women artists children should know' book so want that for the kids...

This thread is really interesting, I gave up history in year 9 so really only had the stereotypical overview and I'd like the kids to be more informed!

A poster earlier in the thread mentioned prostitution. One thing that annoys me about the way history is discussed is how men did all the danger jobs where they were exposed to accidents or dangerous substances. Surely there can't be a job with a more direct link between work and death than prostitution? Leaving aside prostitutes that were murdered, all other prostitutes were exposed to pregnancy, abortions and STDs. There was practically a script for even the 'high-class' prostitute where she would contract syphilis, the disease would become visible, she would be thrown out of the brothel and become a street prostitute and eventually she would die, if she was lucky, in a charity hospital. There can't have been many jobs with such an inevitability of a young death.

This got me thinking, as well, about how history, or at least the television documentary version of history, sells us the narrative of the brave men going off to die a bloody and painful death in battle, sacrificing themselves for their country and their families. I'm not seeking to minimise this or scorn it but it does lead to a lot of men saying 'Hey, you bloody moaning feminists! Men have died to protect women like you.'

In history is the man standing about to charge across a field towards the enemy any braver than the woman finding out she is pregnant and knowing in a few months she will go through an agonising and bloody experience with a high risk of death? This is something women did as a matter of routine but no-one writes epic poems about it or builds them statues. I've heard the figure that one woman in ten died in childbirth but one of my tutors at university said that when you also factored in conditions brought on by pregnancy, post-natal infections and conditions brought on by the effects of repeated pregnancy the number could have been as many as one in three (ie like cancer deaths for women today but in much younger women). Does anyone have an idea of the true figures?

Great thread.