Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain / Edition 1

by Joyce Burnette

Overview

A major study of the role of women in the labour market of Industrial Revolution Britain. It is well known that men and women usually worked in different occupations, and that women earned lower wages than men. These differences are usually attributed to custom but Joyce Burnette here demonstrates instead that gender differences in occupations and wages were instead largely driven by market forces. Her findings reveal that rather than harming women competition actually helped them by eroding the power that male workers needed to restrict female employment and minimising the gender wage gap by sorting women into the least strength-intensive occupations. Where the strength requirements of an occupation made women less productive than men, occupational segregation maximised both economic efficiency and female incomes. She shows that women's wages were then market wages rather than customary and the gender wage gap resulted from actual differences in productivity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521880633
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/17/2008
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Economic History - Second Series
Pages:	390
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Joyce Burnette is Daniel F. Evans Associate Professor of Economics at Wabash College, Indiana.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Women's occupations; 2. Women's wages; 3. Explaining occupational sorting; 4. Testing for occupational barriers in agriculture; 5. Barriers to women's employment; 6. Occupational barriers in self-employment; 7. Women's labour force participation; 8. Conclusion; Appendixes.

Editorial Reviews

"...well-written and carefully researched book." -Anne Clendinning, H-Albion

"Burnette enters the field with an argument that -although not new- is controversial: 'occupational sorting' and lower wages for women were a rational, efficent, and optimal response to biological differences. -Deborah Oxley, Industrical and Labor Relations Review

From the Publisher