The Women's Movement and Women's Employment in Nineteenth Century Britain
The Women's Movement and Women's Employment in Nineteenth Century Britain

Author: Ellen Jordan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-01-04

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 113465748X

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In the first half of the nineteenth century the main employments open to young women in Britain were in teaching, dressmaking, textile manufacture and domestic service. After 1850, however, young women began to enter previously all-male areas like medicine, pharmacy, librarianship, the civil service, clerical work and hairdressing, or areas previously restricted to older women like nursing, retail work and primary school teaching. This book examines the reasons for this change. The author argues that the way femininity was defined in the first half of the century blinded employers in the new industries to the suitability of young female labour. This definition of femininity was, however, contested by certain women who argued that it not only denied women the full use of their talents but placed many of them in situations of economic insecurity. This was a particular concern of the Womens Movement in its early decades and their first response was a redefinition of feminity and the promotion of academic education for girls. The author demonstrates that as a result of these efforts, employers in the areas targeted began to see the advantages of employing young women, and young women were persuaded that working outside the home would not endanger their femininity.

The Women's Movement and Women's Employment in Nineteenth Century Britain
The Women's Movement and Women's Employment in Nineteenth Century Britain

Author: Ellen Jordan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-01-04

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1134657471

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In the first half of the nineteenth century the main employments open to young women in Britain were in teaching, dressmaking, textile manufacture and domestic service. After 1850, however, young women began to enter previously all-male areas like medicine, pharmacy, librarianship, the civil service, clerical work and hairdressing, or areas previously restricted to older women like nursing, retail work and primary school teaching. This book examines the reasons for this change. The author argues that the way femininity was defined in the first half of the century blinded employers in the new industries to the suitability of young female labour. This definition of femininity was, however, contested by certain women who argued that it not only denied women the full use of their talents but placed many of them in situations of economic insecurity. This was a particular concern of the Womens Movement in its early decades and their first response was a redefinition of feminity and the promotion of academic education for girls. The author demonstrates that as a result of these efforts, employers in the areas targeted began to see the advantages of employing young women, and young women were persuaded that working outside the home would not endanger their femininity.

British Women in the Nineteenth Century
British Women in the Nineteenth Century

Author: Kathryn Gleadle

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-09-08

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1403937540

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This highly original synthesis is a clear and stimulating assessment of nineteenth-century British women. It aims to provide students with an in-depth understanding of the key historiographical debates and issues, placing particular emphasis upon recent, revisionist research. The book highlights not merely the ideologies and economic circumstances which shaped women's lives, but highlights the sheer diversity of women's own experiences and identities. In so doing, it presents a positive but nuanced interpretation of women's roles within their own families and communities, as well as stressing women's enormous contribution to the making of contemporary British culture and society.

Women’s Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century
Women’s Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century

Author: Sylvia Paletschek

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2005-11-14

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 0804767076

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The nineteenth century, a time of far-reaching cultural, political, and socio-economic transformation in Europe, brought about fundamental changes in the role of women. Women achieved this by fighting for their rights in the legal, economic, and political spheres. In the various parts of Europe, this process went forward at a different pace and followed different patterns. Most historical research up to now has ignored this diversity, preferring to focus on women’s emancipation movements in major western European countries such as Britain and France. The present volume provides a broader context to the movement by including countries both large and small from all regions of Europe. Fourteen historians, all of them specialists in women’s history, examine the origins and development of women’s emancipation movements in their respective areas of expertise. By exploring the cultural and political diversity of nineteenth-century Europe and at the same time pointing out connections to questions explored by conventional scholarship, the essays shed new light on common developments and problems.

Women and Work in Britain since 1840
Women and Work in Britain since 1840

Author: Gerry Holloway

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-05-07

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1134513003

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The first book of its kind to study this period, Gerry Holloway's essential student resource works chronologically from the early 1840s to the end of the twentieth century and examines over 150 years of women’s employment history. With suggestions for research topics, an annotated bibliography to aid further research, and a chronology of important events which places the subject in a broader historical context, Gerry Holloway considers how factors such as class, age, marital status, race and locality, along with wider economic and political issues, have affected women’s job opportunities and status. Key themes and issues that run through the book include: continuity and change the sexual division of labour women as a cheap labour force women’s perceived primary role of motherhood women and trade unions equality and difference education and training. Students of women’s studies, gender studies and history will find this a fascinating and invaluable addition to their reading material.

Women in Public, 1850-1900
Women in Public, 1850-1900

Author: Patricia Hollis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-20

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1136247890

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Assembling a full and comprehensive collection of material which illustrates all aspects of the emergent women’s movement during the years 1850-1900, this fascinating book will prove invaluable to students of nineteenth century social history and women's studies, to those studying the Victorian novel and to sociologists. Women’s pamphlets and speeches, parliamentary debates and popular journalism, letters and memoirs, royal commissions and the leading reviews, are all used to document the conflicting images of women: ‘surplus women’ and the issue of emigration; women’s work and male hostility to it; the opening of education by Emily Davies; the claim to equity at law; the attack on the sexual double standard, led by Josephine Butler; women’s public service from philanthropy – exemplified in a Mary Carpenter or Louisa Twining or Octavia Hill – to local government; and finally women’s entry into politics led by Lydia Becker. The contents range from Caroline Norton on her battle for child custody in the 1830s to Annie Besant’s inspiration of the match-girl’s strike in 1888, and from W. T. Stead on child prostitution to Mrs Humphrey War’s Appeal against female suffrage in 1889. The book was originally published in 1979.

In Search of the New Woman
In Search of the New Woman

Author: Gillian Sutherland

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-02-19

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1107092795

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A study of the 'New Woman' phenomenon, examining whether British women really achieved the economic independence to challenge social conventions.

Women, Work, and Wages in England, 1600-1850
Women, Work, and Wages in England, 1600-1850

Author: Penelope Lane

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 1843830779

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The work of women is recognised as having been fundamental to the industrialization of Britain. These studies explore how that work was remunerated, in studies that range across time, region and occupation. Topics include the changing nature of women's work, customary norms, and women and the East India Company.

The New Women Movement of the 1890s in England
The New Women Movement of the 1890s in England

Author: Nicole Schindler

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2007-11

Total Pages: 28

ISBN-13: 3638843513

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Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, University of Potsdam, course: The 1890s, 22 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The aim of this paper is to explore the variety of new social and literary forms adopted by the New Woman movement at the end of the 19th century. We want to discuss the different debates on femininity at the fin de siècle with views on lesbianism and the marriage concept at the time. Women challenged their subordinate social and political position and condemned prevailing sexual double standard during the course of the 19th century. They urged for women's rights to employment and full citizenship. With the new theories on Darwinism New Women found a way to rationalize their demands, apart from social and political arguments, also with biological explanations. They voiced their concerns over the woman's reduction in a patriarchal state and set education, marriage laws and social morality on the top of their reform-list. One factor for early feminists was the 1832 Reform Act, which governed women's exclusion from the franchise. By the 1850s British feminism had gained an organized form and coherence, largely through the campaigns of middle-class women. Magazines and novels were a vehicle of feminist protest and thus the social and economic position of women underwent great changes.