What is the Impact of the Industrial Revolution to European Women?

Marx drew from the riddle . . . the stinting analysis of history. The effect of the Industrial Revolution had been to transform the role player from an independent producer who owned his own tools into a grinder hand, a propertyless, destitute member of ship's company, dependent for his livelihood on the capitalist who owned the means of production. Through the capitalist's accumulation of remuneration derived from the surplus value of the worker's product, the exploiters were becoming richer and the put-upon poorer (Tuchman, 1966, p. 479).

The relevance of this line of business for the present study is that, by 1890 and beyond, women workers were among the most soundly exploited of all exploited workers. In material and psychological ways, women workers experienced the strongest effects of mixer, spiritual, and physical control that were visited upon all women in the refinement as a result of the industrial transformation of Europe.

sealed images of fin-de-siecle women suggest that disembodied spirit was more than bearable for women as a result of industrial advancement. But such images are misleading. pontiff (1977) emphasizes the cult of social morality with which Victorian-era women as a class were identified, but points toward the psychological oppression that resulted, in both England and France. In one sense, the industrial revolution freed women of the

The overriding point, however, is that the relative physical ease of domestic life led inevitably to a cult or an exaltation of Woman as the inherently morally or heathenly superior being. In England and America, this led to women's involvement outside the basis in the area of social reform. But in France, the society was organized so that the Catholic Church was the principal ingredient of reform and philanthropy. For the women of France in the 19th century, therefore, the ideal of womanish cultural superiority was enacted in the form of the intellectual and cultural beauty salon (Pope, 1977).

We must run all these errands on foot since we retrieve no carfare.

Sometimes, in order not to be late, we must pay for a bus, or even a taxi . . . .

Earnings are on the average of one franc a day and the commission varies between three and twelve francs.

McDougall, M.L. (1977). working-class women during the industrial revolution, 1780-1914. In R. Bridenthal & C. Koonz (Eds.). Becoming Visible: Women in European History (pp. 255-279). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

The French woman, whose enthusiasm is tempered by reason and intelligence, has understood that she will attain her true social freedom only by knowledge and work . . . .

Women work--and in ever greater numbers; a statistic of 1896 established that at that date 6,400,000 French women were gainfully employed, that the proportion of female workers was 42 per cent of the women over thirteen years of age, and that the number of women workers was 35 per cent of the total number of workers, both male and female ("The Question of the Vote for Women," French Union for Women's Suffrage, France, 1913, Riemer & Fout, 1980, p. 79).

Compulsory vacations, involuntary layoffs because of illness or fatigue, and penalties are all factors contributing to the lumbering of wages (p. 12).

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