Industrial Revolution Gender Roles

“The Steam engine, the cotton spinning machinery, and the manufacture of iron with coal and coke deserve their renown, for invention on this scale wan unprecedented, and it inaugurated an era of industrial expansion and further technological innovation that changed the world”. In the early 1800’s people lived in the countryside as women and men worked as predominantly farmers, but during the mid-1800’s new machines that used steam and coal were able to produce goods at a massive scale. This is known as the Industrial Revolution. This revolution started in Europe, mainly Britain, and expanded to the entire world. In addition, The Industrial Revolution changed the role women played in the workforce, forcing women to work primarily in factories,

The professionalization of particular careers excluded women from work they had previously done. For instance, woman for centuries provided medical care but when medicine became more specialized and required more schooling in the early nineteenth century it became male-dominated. While the Industrial Revolution did open up job opportunities for women that weren’t there before, it also took some opportunities away and left woman jobless. Furthermore, gender-specific employment became increasingly more prevalent during the 19th century. Supervisor roles, operators of advanced machinery, and the higher paying jobs almost always went to men instead of women. The new male-dominant occupations and employment specified to gender during the Industrial Revolution did not play in women’s favor and left them with lower paying jobs often times in factories and coal

Not only did working-class women have to continue their daily duties at home but they also had to work long hours outside of it. This created a double burden on them. Women have always been a part of the workforce but before the Industrial Revolution, it had always been more home-based and had little effect on their duties regarding their household and children. In addition to creating a double burden on the working-class women, the Industrial Revolution also caused an attitude shift to be made regarding upper-class and middle-class women. They were expected to stay at home right after marriage and raise their children. Furthermore, during this time there was a decrease in the number of children per household. Also, these children were being taken away from the home earlier due to that fact that education was becoming more prominent at this