working life of women seventeenth century - School of Economics ...

CONCLUSION 291CONCLUSIONGreat productive capacity of women under conditions of Family and DomesticIndustry-no difference between efficiency of labour when applied for domesticpurposes or for trade.Rate of wages noguide to real value of goods produced-married womenunlikely to work for wages when possessing capital for domestic industy-Women's oroductiveness in textile industries-Agriculture-Other industries-Professional services.Capitalism effected economic revolution in women's position-Ry (a) substitutionof individual for family . wazes-(b) - , employment - of wage-earners onmaster's premises-(c) rapid increase of master's wealth.Exclusion of women from skilled trades not originally due to sex jealousy-Women's lack of specialised training due, (a) to its being unnecessary ; (b)the desire to keep wife in subjection to husband-Reduction in the valueto her family of woman's productive capacity by substitution ofwage-earning for domestic industry-Effect of her productive energy onher maternal functions and her social influence.THE preceding chapters have demonstrated the greatproductive capacity which women possessed whensociety was organised on the basis of Family andDomestic Industry. There was then no hard andfast line dividing domestic occupations from otherbranches of industry, and thus it has not been possibleto discover how much of women's labour was givento purposes of trade and how much was confined tothe service of their families ; but as labour was at thistime equally productive, whether it was employedfor domestic purposes or in Trade, it is not necessaryto discriminate between these two classes of productionin estimating the extent to which the communitydepended upon women's services. The goods producedand the services rendered to their families by wivesand daughters, must if they had been idle haveemployed labour otherwise available for Trade ; orto put the position in another way, if the labour ofwomen had been withdrawn from the domesticindustries and applied to Trade,more goods would havebeen produced for the market, which goods the saidwomen's families would then have obtained by purchase ;but while by this means the trade of the countrywould be greatly increased, unless the efficiency ofwomen's labour had been raised by its transferencefrom domestic to other forms of industry, the wealthof the community would remain precisely the same.Nevertheless, in estimating a country's prosperitydomestic production is generally overlooked, because,as the labour devoted to it receives no wages and itsresults do not enter the market, there is no mechanicalstandard for estimating its value. For similarreasons Home Trade is commonly considered to beof less importance than Foreign Trade, because,as the latter passes through the Customs, its moneyvalue can be much more readily computed, and becausethe man in the street, like King Midas, has imaginedthat gold is wealth. But we are-here consideringthe production of goods and services, not of gold,and from this point of view, the woman who spinsthread to cloths her family, and she who furnishesby her industry milk and cheese, eggs and pork,fruit and vegetables for the consumption of herfamily, has produced exactly the same goods, nomore and no less, than if she had produced themfor the market, and whether these goods areconsumed by her own family or by strangers makesabsolutely no difference to their real value.Neither can the value of a woman's productiveactivity be judged by the wages she receives, becausethe value of a pair of sheets is the same, whetherthe flax has been spun by a well-to-do farmers' wifewho meanwhile lives in affluence, or by a poor womanearning wages which are insufficient to keep bodyand soul together. The labour required for spinningthe flax was the same in either case, for there wasno difference in the type of spinning wheel she used,