Political Science

American and indeed the worlds industrialization was a process that entailed drastic transformations in the fields of industry, social and economic spheres from the pre-industrial era to the industrial period. During that period, countries like Britain, Germany, Belgium and the USA made a clear jump from agricultural dependency societies to self sustaining industrial societies. They embarked on a tight Programme of sustained and regular economic and social growth which propelled them into what was referred to as the New World of material wealth and prosperity. The United States of America became one of the most industrialized economies during the 19th Century. That brings forth the main theme of this essay, which is to examine the plight of women during the industrialization period and post industrialization period. The essay will also try to describe the different roles that women performed both in the family circles and the in the whole society at large. Finally the paper will try to propose some of the things that should be taken into consideration to ensure that the role that women play in the society is revised to improve their plight in the modern world.

Some of the fields affected by industrialization included Agriculture which was improved by new forms of progression farming that insisted on payment in cash rather than in kind. For the farmers, this also meant they needed to acquire cash in order to purchase new implements which could be used to maximize yields and also replace the traditional farm laborers. Industrialization also brought new forms of transport than included canal and rail transport there were also new forms of communication that saw the introduction of the telephone, telegraph, typewriter and also daily news papers. The domestic arena was also affected to a large extent this was mainly attributed to introduction of new kind of goods which altered social relations. (Cowan 1983, p. 47) For instance home sewing and spinning which was mainly done by women was replaced by the purchase of ready made cloth. This also eliminated jobs for the seamstresses. Due to the introduction of many industries, many men and some women were lured to work in the industries for wages which they brought home to trade for goods. Furthermore, the demand for those goods was what fueled economic growth. The households ceased to manufacture goods which were made mainly by women. The substitution for industrial goods for home-made goods eased the burden on womens work for example they started to purchase kerosene instead of making candles at home. Instead of tending to cow management and milking in order to get milk, they started to purchase milk from vendors. Instead of chopping wood they bought coal. This meant easy work for women. (Cowan 1983, p. 48)

    Furthermore, during the industrial revolution era, it was easier for women in the urban environment to do household chores with the assistance of servants. It was also during the 19th century that women started to control their fertility rates with the average children per woman falling from 7.04 in 1800 to 3.56 in 1900. This meant that the number of women with broken backs and poor health reduced. From that perspective, it was easy to conclude that the general lives of average American women were made easier during the 19th Century.
This was however not the case as explained by the contemporary documents taken from the beginning of the century up to its end. The American women seemed to have been exhausted. Even famous women such as Harriet Beecher who was an abolitionist and author who wrote many books were not immune to the pressure even though they had plenty of servants. Some of the daily chores they did included cleaning and arranging the house, cleaning and taking care of the children and their clothes among other duties. (Cowan 1983, p. 50)

Other observers commented and wrote about the ill health of the women, their waxen complexion and stooped shoulders and care worn faces which were brought as a result of the burdens as a result of the domestic works they did.

Before 1800s, most of the wives did limited amount of domestics work for instance, they cooked and baked but their husbands did much of the preparation like chopping wood, pounding grain into meal, shelling corn among others. The children on the other hand helped in performing seasonal tasks such as making sausages. This set up however changed with the coming of industrialization. This is because, their daily lives changed radically, this was mainly attributed to the increase in the availability of jobs in the fast growing industries that made more men to go and work there living the women with the whole burden of housework and the house became a place for leisure for the men and the children.   

The period is also described to be influenced by modern technologies which replaced the old simple industries and the implication that these technologies had on women both in the workforce outside and in the home. Ruth Schwartz first starts by arguing that because of the expansion in welfare, there was a decrease in paid domestic labor. Due to the expansion of the American economy services like food, milk or clean laundry delivery services disappeared and those that remained became costly. This therefore left women at home to do housework without the aid of the servants. In addition to that, the creation of electrical appliances, reduced the amount of work that men did, instead of them taking out garbage, they left their wives to dump the garbage down the garbage disposal as she washed the dishes. The dishwasher also seemed to have eliminated any help that their husbands could have assisted them in doing.

Schwartz also discusses the functionalist interpretation of previously recent history of the family. She writes that the beginning of industrialization caused households to become deprived of their basic productive roles in the economy like people making clothes in a factory instead of making them at home and selling them later. One of the solutions that the women need to adapt in order to gain back a sense of their function in the society is that they need to seek new functions in the workplace that is outside their homes. Another solution would be to come up with a new ideologies in which womens function in the society are not confined to the home. In such circumstances, a woman would not have to go through this role and anxiety. Industrialization was therefore seen as a participant in the backward search for femininity. This was mainly because some womens roles were replaced with modern technologies women were also searching for themselves within the home set up. Such a situation is what led to the baby boom where many couples started having more babies. Women also started to return to the productive and fruitful ways that they experienced before the beginning of industrialization. They began crouching, knitting, baking and growing vegetable gardens. (Cowan 1983, p. 52)

     More work continued pilling up for women as technological systems which dominated the households and which the households were built around like the water, sewers and gas systems, were built with the simple assumption that there will be somebody around to operate them which was no other than the wife. To add on that, since utility companies operated twenty four hours a day, there was evidence that the larger society believed households should function around the clock. Also, if households had the intent of paying women for the women for the work that they performed inside and outside the home, then the technological appliances like the washing machines would not have been preferred over the laundry delivery services.

    Some theories suggests that the modern appliances are what caused the women to shift to workplaces outside their homes they now had more free time at their disposal since their jobs was made easier. For instance, the washing machines cleaned clothes faster than what the wash tub did. Schwartz however did not agree with these theories, this is because as stated earlier, time wasnt always reduced by the household appliances. Just to add on that, housewives began to enter into the labor market outside of the home were the ones who could not afford these amenities. The technology therefore was not a cause of women to enter the workforce outside the home. For whatever reasons, women simply wanted to be employed and they saw the amenities could not allow them to work outside of the home without somehow endangering the living standards of their families. The women could come home from work tire and still be able to prepare a decent dinner for their families thanks to the invention of the icebox they could also do a load of laundry to ensure that their husbands and children had clean clothes to wear the next day.

    What was also true of cooking was also true of all the other household chores as well. As the 19th Century progressed, in almost every aspect of the household work, the industrialization served to eliminate the work that husbands and children were doing and at the same time leaving the work of women either augmented or even touched. The factories also made boots and shoes this meant the men were no longer required to make leather goods at home which were one of their main trades at home. The factories also made tin ware and pottery which meant that they no longer had to whittle. The children were also freed from the house hold chores since they had to go to schools. Moreover, the piped water which was introduced in almost every middle class household meant that they had no longer to be burdened with perpetual bucket carrying. Furthermore, the growth of the meat packing factories coupled with the introduction of refrigerated transport during the 1880s meant that men had no longer to spend much time in butchering at home. This meant that all the male household occupations were virtually eliminated by technological and economic innovations during the mid-19th century.

    The 29th century however witnessed several changes in the domestic and household technology which was turned from a unit of production to a unit of consumption. This simply meant that the food and clothing that the people once made in their home was now manufactured in factories. The economic ties that once bound together the family members so tightly were undone. This therefore meant that nothing was left for the adult woman to do at home. This led to women to start different liberation campaigns to be liberated so that they are allowed to engage in employment activities outside their homes. This was however dismissed by some men who they termed it as simply a bunch of affluent housewives who had nothing better to do at home.

The health care system also developed from households into centralized institutions by approximately the end of the nineteenth century. Manufacturers of patent medical supplies were the first to take over some of the work which were earlier been done by housewives. At the same time, the various methods and forms of health care which had once been given by housewives increasingly became the responsibility of well trained workers. Nursing as a field started to professionalize in the latter years of the 19th century. By the end of that century, women had started to involve themselves in nursing activities which was practiced mainly in hospitals and not at home as it was previous (Cowan 1983, p. 62). The patient drug business was so active that there were more remedies to different illnesses. In 1862, the first schools for nurses were founded in Philadelphia and New York. By 1900, there were 432 schools for nurses that had produced 3,456 graduates and a professional association such as the American Nurse Association was started. Because the majority of these nurses were women, this meant that the adult women who might otherwise have had to care for those patients in their own houses, there was therefore a significant change from the net production to the net consumption of health services. This also meant more work for the mothers although the workplace had shifted from domestic to outside places.

The womens work also expanded to other outside fields like driving and shopping and waiting in lines and the energy that had once spent in preserving strawberries and stitching petticoats. And the energy that was once spent in bedsides care is now spent in driving a feverish child to the hospital to be attended by a doctor or racing to the railway station to pick up a relative, or even taking the baseball team to the next town for a game.

The automobile had become to the American housewife of the middle classes, what the cast-iron stove in the kitchen would have been to her counterpart of 1850- the vehicle through which she did much of her most significant work and the work locale where she could often be found (Cowan 1983, p. 85)

In conclusion, Cowan 1983, p. states that technological advancements in it are not at fault. This is because the daily lives that are usually shaped by the durable and household goods are more comfortable, this makes the society not to give them up. She also believes that the wife does not need to totally succumb the work process in which they are involved in. This problem there needs some fixing through neutralizing both the sexual connate ness of the vacuum cleaners and the washing machines and the senselessness tyranny of immaculate floors and spotless shirts. Not by returning to the old ways or by destroying the technological systems that have evolved over time. This simply means that though women still play major role in todays activities they have managed to move from the traditional place which is the homestead and play an active role in a progressive society.