Women's Work, Markets and Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

Female labor force participation varies significantly even among countries with similar levels of economic development. Recent studies have shown that gender norms can help explain these differences in women's work, but the channels through which norms impact women's employment decisions are not well understood. We present novel data on spouses' preferences and perceptions of community attitudes about female labor in rural India and document associations with female work. We find that the perceived social cost of women's work falls on men and that husbands' opposition to female labor is associated with their wives' lower take-up of employment.

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Anglican Women and Social Service in Hong Kong

Christian Women in Chinese Society ◽

10.5790/hongkong/9789888455928.003.0012 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 239-252

Author(s):

Jane Lee

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Hong Kong ◽

Women Leaders ◽

Social Services ◽

The Elderly ◽

Women's Work ◽

First Century ◽

Leadership Roles ◽

Women’S Work ◽

Women And Children

This chapter explores the contribution of Anglican women, Chinese and British, in the promotion of welfare for women and children in Hong Kong from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The narrative covers four areas of progress in chronological order, which include: Elevating Social Status through Education, Advocating Women’s Rights through Social Movements, the establishment of the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui Women’s League, and women leaders in social services. It presents an account of change and continuity in the development of women’s work for women: from British women’s work of charity and evangelism to Chinese women’s assumption of leadership roles; from protection of girls and women in the nineteenth century, to pioneering nursery and child care in postwar rehabilitation, and providing holistic care to the elderly and marginalised in twenty-first century.

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MIDWIFERY AND WOMEN'S WORK IN THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC: A RECONSIDERATION OF LAUREL THATCHER ULRICH'S A MIDWIFE'S TALE

The Historical Journal ◽

10.1017/s0018246x10000105 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 53 (2) ◽

pp. 423-428 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

TANFER EMIN TUNC

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Economic History ◽

Economic Value ◽

Primary Source ◽

Women's Work ◽

Pulitzer Prize ◽

Early American Republic ◽

Early American ◽

Women’S Work ◽

Wage Earning

ABSTRACTTwenty years after its initial publication, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's Pulitzer Prize winning monograph A midwife's tale: the life of Martha Ballard based on her diary, 1785–1812 (1990) still serves as a major benchmark in women's labour/economic history mainly because it provides scholars with a window into the life of a turn-of-the-nineteenth-century lay American rural healer not through the comments of an outsider, but through the words of the healer herself. While, on the surface, Ballard's encoded, repetitive, and quotidian diary may seem trivial and irrelevant to historians, as Ulrich notes, ‘it is in the very dailiness, the exhaustive, repetitious dailiness, that the real power of Martha Ballard's book lies … For her, living was to be measured in doing’ (p. 9). By piecing together ‘ordinary’ primary source material to form a meaningful, extraordinary socio-cultural narrative, Ulrich elucidates how American midwives, such as Martha Ballard, functioned within the interstices of the private and public spheres. A midwife's tale is thus not only methodologically significant, but also theoretically important: by illustrating the economic contributions that midwives made to their households and local communities, and positioning the organizational skill of multitasking as a source of female empowerment, it revises our understanding of prescribed gender roles during the early American Republic (1783–1848). Even though A midwife's tale is clearly limited in terms of time (turn-of-the-nineteenth century) and place (rural Maine), it deserves the renewed attention of historians – especially those interested in gender relations and wage-earning, the economic value of domestic labour, and women's work before industrialization.

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