It’s actually pretty complicated. One notable critique of this entire discussion is that racialized and poor women have always worked outside the home at least, during the industrial era (discussing divisions of labor prior to industrialization is just going to devolve into a discussion about how those economies worked at all). But yeah during the world wars, latge numbers of middle class women were called into the workforce to engage in “masculine” labor. But by that point you’d already started seeing women fighting for educational equality and the right to certain careers of passion such as research.
Additionally, certain industrial labor was always “feminine” labor, such as secretarial work, but also plenty of types of working on factory floors. Many textile factories only hired young women for example, even in the early days.
Women worked, particularly working class and poor women, almost always. Some of that was paid as well. Losing so many men to the war created a circumstance to access different kinds of paid labour that women were generally not selected for, and possibly didn’t want, normally. It had a significant impact on employment but wasn’t exclusively the cause of women entering the workforce but definitely accelerated the transition.
Huh. And here i thought women started working because the men were sent to die off in wars and there was no one left to maintain production.
It’s actually pretty complicated. One notable critique of this entire discussion is that racialized and poor women have always worked outside the home at least, during the industrial era (discussing divisions of labor prior to industrialization is just going to devolve into a discussion about how those economies worked at all). But yeah during the world wars, latge numbers of middle class women were called into the workforce to engage in “masculine” labor. But by that point you’d already started seeing women fighting for educational equality and the right to certain careers of passion such as research.
Additionally, certain industrial labor was always “feminine” labor, such as secretarial work, but also plenty of types of working on factory floors. Many textile factories only hired young women for example, even in the early days.
Women worked, particularly working class and poor women, almost always. Some of that was paid as well. Losing so many men to the war created a circumstance to access different kinds of paid labour that women were generally not selected for, and possibly didn’t want, normally. It had a significant impact on employment but wasn’t exclusively the cause of women entering the workforce but definitely accelerated the transition.