Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T06:05:58.018Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Working with Husband? “Occupation’s Wife” and Married Women’s Employment in the Censuses in England and Wales between 1851 and 1911

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2020

Xuesheng You Open the ORCID record for Xuesheng You [Opens in a new window]
Xuesheng You*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge, History, West Road, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, CB3 9EF
*
Email: xy242@cam.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Women played a vital role in British industrialization. However, studies of women’s work are often hindered by data limitation. The British censuses provide an unparalleled opportunity to study women’s work and its impact systematically. However, the reliability of the census recording of female employment is still under debate. This articles aims to contribute to this ongoing debate by examining a particular census recording concerning married women who were supposedly working with their husbands, that is “occupation’s wife.” By analyzing a new source of big data, namely 100 percent sample of Census Enumerators’ Books and published census reports, this article shows that the recording of “occupation’s wife” was not informative about the level of married women’s labor in the form of working together with their husbands in the same trade. Given the important fact that married women recorded as “occupation’s wife” constituted the largest group of married women with any occupational titles in the censuses, the results presented in this article suggest a reassessment of some of the empirical foundations in the studies of married women’s work.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , Winter 2020 , pp. 585 - 613
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Social Science History Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aktinson, Paul (2012) “Isn’t it time you were finishing? Women’s labour force participation and childbearing in England, 1860–1920.” Feminist Economics 18 (4): 145–64.Google Scholar
Allen, Robert C. (1992) Enclosure and the Yeoman. Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, Robert C. (2019) “Class structure and inequality during the Industrial Revolution: lessons from England’s social tables, 1688–1867.” Economic History Review 72 (1): 88–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Michael (2007a) “Mis-specification of servant occupations in the 1851 Census: A problem revisited,” in Goose, Nigel (ed.) Women’s Work in Industrial England: Regional and Local Perspectives. Local Population Studies: 260–68.Google Scholar
Anderson, Michael (2007b) “What can the mid-Victorian censuses tell us about variations in married women’s employment?,” in Goose, Nigel (ed.) Women’s Work in Industrial England: Regional and Local Perspectives. Local Population Studies: 182–208.Google Scholar
Berg, Maxine (1993) “What difference did women’s work make to the Industrial Revolution?” History Workshop Journal 35 (1): 22–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Booth, Charles (1886) “Occupations of the people of the United Kingdom, 1801–81.” Journal of the Statistical Society of London (49): 314–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourke, Joanna (1994) “Housewifery in working-class England 1860–1914.” Past & Present 143 (1): 167–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burton, Nick, and Southall, Humphry R. (2004). GIS of the ancient parishes of England and Wales, 1500–1850 [data collection]. UK Data Service. SN: 4828.Google Scholar
Burnette, Joyce (2007) “Married with children: The family status of female day-labourers at two south-western farms.” Agricultural History Review (55): 75–94.Google Scholar
Burnette, Joyce (2008) Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cobbett, William (1985) [1830] Rural Rides, 1985 edition. Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Davidoff, Leonore, and Hall, Catherine (1987) Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1750–1850. Routledge.Google Scholar
De Vries, Jan (2008) The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Demand and the Household Economy, 1650 to Present. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dupree, Marguerite W. (1995) Family Structure in Staffordshire Potteries, 1840–1880. Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, Williams (1750) The Country Housewife’s Family Companion. London Google Scholar
Field, Jacob (2013) “Domestic service, gender, and wages in rural England, c. 1700–1860.” Economic History Review 66 (1): 249–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Catherine (1979) “The early formation of Victorian domestic ideology,” in Sandra, Burman (ed.) Fit Work for Women. Routledge: 15–32.Google Scholar
Hatton, Timothy J., and Bailey, Roy E. (2001) “Women’s work in census and survey, 1911–1931.” Economic History Review 54 (1): 87–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henry, David (1771) The Complete English Farmer. F. Newbery.Google Scholar
Higgs, Edward (1987) “Women, occupation and work in the nineteenth century censuses.” History Workshop Journal (23): 59–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Higgs, Edward (2005) Making Sense of the Census Revisited. Institute of Historical Research.Google Scholar
Higgs, Edward, Jones, Christine, and Schürer, Kevin (2013) “Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) Guide,” www1.essex.ac.uk/history/research/icem/documents/icem-guide-version-2-2015.pdf (accessed June 1).Google Scholar
Higgs, Edward, and Wilkinson, Amanda (2016) “Women, occupations and work in the Victorian censuses revisited.” History Workshop Journal 81 (1): 17–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, Bridget (1993) “Women, work and the census: A problem for historians of women.” History Workshop Journal 35 (1): 78–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Honeyman, Katrina (2000) Women, Gender and Industrialization in England, 1700–1870. Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Horn, Pamela (1990) The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Servant. The History Press Google Scholar
Horrell, Sara, and Humphries, Jane (1995) “Women’s labour force participation and the transition to male-breadwinner family, 1790–1865.” Economic History Review 48 (1): 89–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howitt, William (1884) The Rural Life of England. Longman.Google Scholar
Hudson, Pat (1992) The Industrial Revolution. Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Humphries, Jane (1981) “Protective legislation and, the capitalist state, and working class men: The case of the 1842 Mines Regulation Acts.’ Feminist Review (7): 1–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humphries, Jane (1990) “Enclosures, common rights, and women: The proletarianization of families in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.” Journal of Economic History 50 (1): 17–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humphries, Jane (2016) “2016 Ellen McArthur Lecture.” University of Cambridge, www.econsoc.hist.cam.ac.uk/podcast-humphries.html (accessed June 1).Google Scholar
Hunt, Edward H. (1981) British Labour History. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.Google Scholar
Jordan, Ellen (1988) “Female unemployment in England and Wales 1851–1911: An examination of the census figures for 15–19 year olds.” Social History 13 (2): 175–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jordan, Ellen (1989) “The exclusion of women from industry in nineteenth-century Britain.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (2): 273–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kain, Roger, and Oliver, R. R. (2001). Historic Parishes of England and Wales: An Electronic Map of Boundaries before 1850 with a Gazetteer and Metadata [data collection]. UK Data Service. SN: 4348.Google Scholar
Lemire, Beverly (2005) The Business of Everyday Life: Gender, Practice and Social Politics in England, c. 1600–1900. Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Loudon, John C (1831) An Encyclopedia of Agriculture. Longman.Google Scholar
Lown, Judy (1990) Women and Industrialization: Gender and Work in Nineteenth Century England. Polity Press.Google Scholar
McGeevor, Sophie (2014) “How well did the 19th century census record women’s ‘regular’ employment in England and Wales? A case study of Hertfordshire in 1851.” History of the Family 19 (4): 489–512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKay, John (2007) “Married women and work in nineteenth-century Lancashire: The evidence of the 1851 and 1861 Census report,” in Goose, Nigel (ed.) Women’s Work in Industrial England: Regional and Local Perspectives. Local Population Studies: 164–81.Google Scholar
Mills, Dennis, and Schürer, Kevin (1996) “The enumeration process,” in Mills, Dennis and Schürer, Kevin (eds.) Local Communities in the Victorian Census Enumerators’ Books. Local Population Studies: 16–26.Google Scholar
Perkin, Joan (1989) Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England. Routledge.Google Scholar
Roberts, Elizabeth (1995) Women’s Work, 1840–1940. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rose, Sonya O. (1986) “‘Gender at work’: sex, class and industrial capitalism.” History Workshop Journal 21 (1): 113–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, Sonya O. (1992) Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century England. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ross, Ellen (1993) Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast London 1870–1918. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Satchell, Max, Kitson, Peter, Newton, Gill, Shaw-Taylor, L., and Wrigley, E. A. (2016) 1851 England and Wales Census Parishes, Townships and Places [data collection]. UK Data Service.Google Scholar
Schürer, Kevin, and Higgs, Edward (2014) Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM), 1851–1911 [data collection]. UK Data Service. SN: 7481.Google Scholar
Seccombe, Wally (1986) “Patriarchy stabilized: The construction of the male breadwinner wage norm in nineteenth-century Britain.” Social History 11 (1): 53–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sharpe, Pamela (1995) “Continuity and change: Women’s history and economic history in Britain.’ Economic History Review 48 (2): 353–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sharpe, Pamela (1996) Adapting to Capitalism: Working Women in the English Economy 1700–1850. Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaw-Taylor, Leigh (2007) “Diverse experiences: the geography of adult female employment in England and the 1851 Census,” in Goose, Nigel (ed.) Women’s Work in Industrial England: Regional and Local Perspectives. Local Population Studies: 29–50.Google Scholar
Shaw-Taylor, Leigh (2012) “The rise of agrarian capitalism and the decline of family farming in England.” Economic History Review 65 (1): 26–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Valenze, Deborah (1991) “The art of women and the business of men: women’s work and the dairy industry c. 1740–1840.” Past & Present 130 (1): 142–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verdon, Nicola (2002) Rural Women Workers in Nineteenth Century England: Gender, Work and Wages. Boydell Press.Google Scholar
Verdon, Nicola (2003) “‘… Subjects deserving of the highest praise’: Farmers’ wives and the farm economy in England, c. 1700–1850.” Agricultural History Review (51): 23–39.Google Scholar
Vickery, Amanda (1993) “Golden age to separate spheres? A review of the categories and chronology of English women’s history.” Historical Journal 36 (2): 383–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winstanley, Michael (1996) “Industrialization and the small farm: Family and household economy in nineteenth-century Lancashire.” Past & Present (152): 157–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woollard, Matthew (1998) “The classification of occupations in the 1881 census of England and Wales.” History and Computing 10 (1–3): 17–36. doi: 10.3366/hac.1998.10.1-3.17 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
You, Xuesheng (2020) “Women’s labour force participation in nineteenth-century England and Wales: Evidence from the 1881 Census Enumerators’ Books.” Economic History Review 73 (1): 106–133. doi.org/10.1111/ehr.12876 CrossRefGoogle Scholar