The Working Woman

Through my research (googling) of women taking the role of working mother versus housewife I came up with some very surprising, very interesting conclusions concerning the topic of the “working woman”. This is a basic summary of what I found though of course there are always exceptions.

From the time of Christ (and certainly since the beginning of time) up until the 1700s women did not work outside the home. They were employed to sew and take care of the children. Their education also consisted of basic reading and writing skills (varying over the ages depending on the era ie in the dark ages it was mostly only the wealthy and the monks who were educated). Women took care of their homes.

According to the writings of Jane Austen which focuses on life in the late 1700s and early 1800s women did not work. At best a woman without inheritance or who didn’t marry into wealth would become a governess (a type of live-in teacher) who educated the children of wealthy families in geography, literature, foreign languages and accomplishments such as the pianoforte or painting. Higher education was not available to women and at this time women were under the care of either their fathers or their husbands. They had no social or marital responsibility to work and earn a living.

The start of women taking paid work came about in 1800s at the start of the industrial revolution. Women moved from the country where they worked on farms to the towns where they worked in factories. These women needed the money and were willing to take low pay in harsh working conditions.  Women still were not working as professionals.

Up until about the 1950s women worked until they got married and had children. These jobs usually included nursing, teaching or secretarial work. At the start of World War 2 men went off to war and women were left to hold the fort. Labour was short and the government needed women to step into men’s jobs so that economies would not collapse. This seems to have started the trend of mothers leaving home to work, where previously it was mostly single women or widows who would work. This continues today with women taking ever higher paid jobs.

My conclusion is this: women have always been industrious whether they worked to clothe and feed their families or whether they worked outside the home to earn an income. Always industrious and always worthy. With the progression of time women have received better education and more options in terms of career, but at the same time seem to receive less care and regard from the men who should be caring for them. One side of the scale tips up; the other tips down. We pile onto the man's side of the scale and we all sink as a result (higher divorce rate; troubled teens; increased violence)... Again it comes down to masculinity and femininity: there are two sides to the scale. The question is, how does this scale balance in an environment where mothers work; how does it work in the society we have created today?