Changes in social and gender structure

Unit 4
1750-1914
The Modern Era

1. Changes in social and gender structure
   1. Industrial Revolution
      1. Changes Gender
         1. Poor women who had taken care of home/worked in fields shifted to
            1. factories/sweatshops
            2. putting out system – little time/space for domestic work
            3. Actually had more “opportunity” than middle/upper class
               1. But I doubt they’d be too excited
            4. Still paid less than men
            5. By end of century, most working women were single
            6. Reform laws limited working hours of women
            7. Women lost manufacturing jobs of the domestic (putting out) system
               1. Expected to return to role as homemaker/childcare provider
         2. Upper class women
            1. More wealth/more servants to manage
            2. Less influence/power outside the home than in previous eras
         3. New group – middle class housewives
            1. Lived on outskirts of cities – with servant or two
            2. Husbands went to work in white-collar jobs
            3. Like upper class women, isolated from the work world
            4. Relegated to afternoon social calls/drinking tea
            5. Victorian Age idealized women
               1. Manners/etiquette counted
               2. Nothing distasteful should be seen by women
            6. Contradiction between what was appropriate for middle class and the realities of the lower class pushed middle class to demand change – led movements
            7. As men earn money, women return to traditional roles
               1. Power diminishes
            8. This is the group that starts organizing to demand rights/suffrage
            9. New culture of consumption meant to free up women to pursue activities outside of home
               1. Sewing machines, clocks, stoves, refrigerators, ovens
         4. Factory laborers
            1. Have to work long hours and fulfill traditional role as caretaker for husband, children, home
         5. Social mobility – ability to move from one class to the next
            1. middle class expands
            2. standard of living improves
         6. Turned husband into wage earner and wife into homemaker
      2. Changes social class
         1. New aristocrats
            1. Those who became rich based on industrial success
            2. Old money vs. new money
            3. Wealth based on Adam Smith – Wealth of Nations
               1. Private ownership
         2. Middle class
            1. managers, accountants, ministers, lawyers, doctors, skilled professionals
         3. Working class
            1. factory workers + peasant farmers
            2. New twist – now the massive lower class is working side by side – urbanization
            3. Able to daily see the huge class discrepancy
               1. Saw elite gain wealth at their expense
            4. Under feudalism – people resigned to fate – that’s the way it had always been
               1. But…this was a new phenomenon – saw change before their eyes
   2. Commercial and demographic developments
   3. Emancipation of serfs/slaves
      1. Attracted reformers’ interests – abolishing African slave trade/emancipating Russian serfs
         1. Abolishing African slave trade
            1. Safe havens for former slaves
               1. Sierra Leone – safe haven for former slaves, British colony
               2. Liberia – colonization scheme for freed slaves from U.S.
         2. Emancipating Russian serfs
            1. Serfdom continued until 1861
            2. Causes/Effects of serfdom
               1. Dissatisfaction with their lives led to acts of violence/rebellion
               2. Can’t leave the land – Russia doesn’t have pool of factory labor
               3. Russia lacked internal market for goods – no one has money
               4. Lacked incentive to work harder, grow more, improve land
            3. Emancipation of 1861
               1. Now free, no longer bound to land owned by large landowners
               2. serfs could now take more work off of land – available for factories
               3. but…indebted freemen did not improve agricultural output
                  1. Like sharecropping vs. slavery in the American South
               4. Former serfs, peasants, now had to pay for land
                  1. Valuations and taxes high, almost an impossible task
      2. But…slavery actually expands before it diminishes
         1. Eli Whitney’s cotton gin necessitated more slaves in American South
            1. Might have died out earlier – cotton farming a waste of time
         2. Cotton gin requires a ton of cheap labor to stick cotton in machine
   4. Tension between work patterns
   5. Ideas about gender
      1. Although in most societies status of women remained secondary, great changes
      2. In West, greater awareness of unfair and unequal treatment began to spread
         1. Stimulated by Enlightenment theories
         2. Stimulated by active role of women in American and French revolutions
      3. Industrial Revolution altered the conditions under which women worked
         1. Shifted workplace away from the farm
         2. Men and women both worked in mines, factories, spaces away from the home
         3. Created a domestic sphere and separate working sphere
      4. Europe and US women of lower classes compelled to enter workplace
         1. Bore double burden of serving as primary homemakers and caregivers for their families
      5. After mid-1800s, # of working women declined
         1. Women of middle/upper class rarely worked anyway
         2. Wages for industrial workers increased
            1. Jobs more desirable to men
         3. Laws restricting number of hours that women and children could work
      6. Cult of domesticity – stressing the women’s place in the home – dominated Western culture
         1. Men’s in the workplace
      7. Certain occupations open to women – child care, teaching, domestic household work, nursing
      8. Strong vigorous women’s movements appeared in Europe, Canada and the United States
         1. Demanded suffrage – voting rights
         2. Equal opportunity to work
         3. Equal pay
         4. Temperance
      9. Handful of European nations – gave women the right to vote before World War I
      10. Move toward women’s equality slower in non-Western societies
          1. in some educational level rose
          2. property rights rose
          3. Like West, women could work in certain occupations – agriculture, artisans, teachers
          4. Like West – lower class women tended to enter workplace