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What Role Did Women Play During The Industrial Revolution

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The term “Industrial Revolution” brings to my mind images of women and children working in unpleasant and dangerous environments, but it should be learned that women and children worked in agricultural economies too. They were always expected to work. The only thing that changed with the Industrial Revolution was the type of work they did and the situations under which they worked.

The west’s Industrial Revolution transitioned the roles of women in many ways. Industrialization abuse into women’s traditional work, but aimed to expand educational opportunities. Some work roles led to protests creating riots as attention shifted to work-based strikes, including feminism, developed by 1914. Although for women it was very dangerous, working conditions …show more content…

It motivated young women to leave their families in the country to work in the growing urban centers. The wages allowed young women to save something for their future marriages, and finally some daughters used their earnings to assist their families. Maxine Berg quotes an observer in Scotland as saying “one rarely met with an old woman in the north of Scotland, that is not otherwise employed, but who has got a distaff stuck in her girdle and a spindle at her hand.” (Berg, 142) A different witness in the Scottish Highlands commented: Here as in all semi-barbarous countries, is the woman seen to be regarded rather the drudge than the companion to the man. The husband turns up the land and sows it – the wife conveys the manure to it in a creel, tends the corn, reaps it, hoes the potatoes, digs them up, carries the whole home on her back, when bearing the creel, she is also engaged with spinning with the distaff … (Berg 143) In towns women might work along side their husbands as a housewife. Managing the house and the handle of other accounts, in addition to giving birth, raising children and running their lives. The Industrial Revolution was not the beginning of work for women. Women had long been doing hard work for long hours. The Industrial Revolution did bring new

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