IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jechis/v47y1987i04p929-949_04.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

“…The Most Free From Objection …” The Sexual Division of Labor and Women's Work in Nineteenth-Century England

Author

Listed:
  • Humphries, Jane

Abstract

Most explanations of trends in women's work emphasize women's role in childbearing, along with technological and organizational changes in production. The explanations neglect an important factor: the need to control sexuality in order to secure demographic order. Segregated employment enabled almost all family members to work, while discouraging heterosexual intimacy. Nineteenth-century attitudes illustrate the anxiety felt when unrelated men and women worked together. The argument is tested by correlating regional variation in illegitimacy, as a measure of failed social control, with variation in sex segregation.

Suggested Citation

  • Humphries, Jane, 1987. "“…The Most Free From Objection …” The Sexual Division of Labor and Women's Work in Nineteenth-Century England," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(4), pages 929-949, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:47:y:1987:i:04:p:929-949_04
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022050700049871/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hazan, Moshe & D. Maoz, Yishay, 2002. "Women's labor force participation and the dynamics of tradition," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 193-198, April.
    2. Casari, Marco & Lisciandra, Maurizio, 2015. "Gender Discrimination and Common Property Resources," IZA Discussion Papers 9601, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Conrad Miller & Jennifer Peck & Mehmet Seflek, 2019. "Integration Costs and Missing Women in Firms," NBER Working Papers 26271, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Maria Stanfors & Tim Leunig & Björn Eriksson & Tobias Karlsson, 2014. "Gender, productivity, and the nature of work and pay: evidence from the late nineteenth-century tobacco industry," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 67(1), pages 48-65, February.
    5. Casari, Marco & Lisciandra, Maurizio, 2014. "Gender Discrimination and Common Property Resources: a Model," MPRA Paper 57712, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:47:y:1987:i:04:p:929-949_04. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jeh .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.