Women and industrial revolution

Women and industrial revolution

During the industrial revolution women's roles changed drastically. Instead of staying at home weaving or looking after the children, women had to leave the house to go work in factories and mines. They would have to leave everything they had to do at home to go and work. Because of the separation of tasks according to gender and the cultural expectation of women meant that women were worse off than men during the industrial revolution.

During the industrial revolution women's jobs were changed and changed again. If at one point they worked in a bakery or in a different kind of store, their job was soon taken over by men. Men were known as better "business men" and could cope better in a shop and become more successful. After this women then went back to working in the home if they were not already doing so. They did not stay there for long. While the women were working from home, being a "normal" house wife and looking after the children, men soon began to complain that women are not doing "proper" work unless they get paid for it. This caused the women to leave the house to go and work in factories, mines and other places where work seemed like cheap labor.

Now women seemed to be in a trap. No matter what they did, they either got mistreated, abused of both. They stay at home and don't get paid, they get told off for doing so, because the men don't like it. They go and work in factories, and men mistreat them. The working conditions in the factories were life threatening. They could have received a life threatening injury on a machine or received a lung infection from the bad air in the mines. Anything could have happened to them, only because they had to do what their husbands said. They were not allowed to stay at home because they had to do something where they would get paid.

The reason why women were worse off than men during the industrial revolution was because they had to stay loyal to their husbands. They had to do what men said and agree with them. They had no real life of their own, because it was owned by another person of the opposite sex.

Women, Children and Industrial Revolution

For many English families in the 1800's, the main source of income was home business, or the cottage industry, in which people produced goods in their homes. Few products could be manufactured by this industry, and as a result, powerful, mass-producing machines were developed to assist in the need for faster production rates. These often massive machines could not be placed in homes, leading to the use of factories, which were ran by numerous laborers. The need for skilled workers resulted in the requirement of education for the children of the working class, and women also played a new role, working outside the home to feed their families, therefore gaining ...