ESSAY 2

GENDER IN HISTORY

Global Perspectives Second Edition

MERRY E. WIESNER-HANKS

@)WILEY-BLACKWELL A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication

:,;

This second edition first published 2011 © Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks 2011

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wiesner, Merry E., 1952- Gender in history : global perspectives / Merry Wiesner-Hanks. - 2nd ed.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4051-8995-8 {pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Sex role-History. 2. Social history. I. Title. HQ1075.W526 2011 305.309-dc22

2010003198

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Set in 10/12pt Saban by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Singapore

7 2016

Chronologi

Acknowled;

1 lntroduc

Sex and Gender• Structur The Ori;

The Farr

Ancient The Clai

Medit Africa, t:

Premo Medieva

Medit, The Cal< The Indt

Economi

Foraging (20,00

Agricultt Slavery(' Capitalis Corporat

(1900-

(Albany: >rah Lynn Family in is, 2007). y Models, .dJohnR. Quest for e of inter- :emporary pecifically venty-first ion Later .nd Rayna Politics of Gita Sen,

onsidered: University >ughts and elly, Fatal :ambridge,

tks to orig- ,ey.com/go/

CHAPTER THREE

Economic Life-

Ura.wing boundaries between economic issues and other realms of life may '.l;e difficult and in some cases artificial. As we saw in chapter 2, in many of -the-world's cultures the family or household group was (and is) the primary unit of production and trade, growing crops or making different types of

.Jrnms · together and then using and selling them; ownership and control f,f land and other forms of wealth was also a family venture. In even more

fi1f the world's cultures, families have been the primary units of consump- . (Jon, with the majority of goods and services purchased for the use of the \vhole household rather than a single individual. Economic life w.as also tied to religious, political, and educational institutions, which we will be exam- Jning in later chapters: religious institutions often owned large amounts of fond and consumed significant amounts of goods and services; a person's or (nmily's economic status was often more dependent on access to royal or, ·noble favors than on anything we would recognize as labor; schooling in l!WSt - though not all - cultures was designed to improve one's and one's

,Jnmily's economic well-being. Recent scholarship on economic matters has stressed these links to other

:~reas of life, and has also drawn attention to how "economic" is defined. lraditional studies of the economy focused primarily on production, and tWcn the broadest usually viewed four activities - work, trade, ownership, ,f!lld consumption - as the defining aspects of economic life; they are, after ;111, what governments tax, through income taxes, tariffs, property taxes,

. ,rnd sales taxes. Newer research suggests that even this broad view misses iuJivities that have a tremendous economic impact, however. To be accurate ,wd inclusive, an analysis of economic life in any period should include reproductive as well as productive activities; reproduction means not simply ~hildbearing, but the care and nurturing of all household members, activities

·• that allowed them to take part in production or trade. This is especially true inr preindustrial or nonindustrial societies in which labor for sustenance

5 6 Economic Life

or for the market often went on in the household itself, with all family members taking part in both productive and reproductive labor.

Some of this broadening of the definition of "economic" has come from feminist analysis, whi~h has made it clear that economic concepts are highly gendered. In many cultures, men's tasks have been defined as "woik" while women's have been defined as "assisting," "helping out," or "housework." Some tasks generally done by women, such as the care and nurturing of household members, have not been regarded as "work" at all, though they would be considered "work" if they were done·for pay by individuals who came from outside the domestic group. Because of this, women's activities were (and are) not counted in various statistical measurements such as the gross national product, and women were viewed as not contributing to eco- nomic development. Even when women's activities were regarded as work, they were generally not valued as highly as the tasks normally done by men, though they might have taken the same amount of time, skill, and effort. Thus economic life was profoundly shaped by notions of gender, and in most of the world's cultures sharp distinctions were drawn between men's work (which might be thought of simply as "work") and women's work. In some societies these distinctions were so strong that individuals who were morphologically male but who did tasks normally assigned to females were regarded as members of a third gender, an issue we will analyze more fully in chapter 8. These gender distinctions in work were accompanied by and related to gender distinctions in other segments of the economy, for women rarely had the same access to land, cash, or other types of wealth as did the men of their family or social group. Together with their lower wages, this lessened their ability to purchase goods or services.

Gender hierarchies in the division of labor and other aspects of economic life were present in many of the world's earliest civilizations, and they have survived massive changes. New occupations have tended to be valued - and paid - according to whether they were done primarily by men or women. This has begun to change within the last several decades in some parts of the world, but, precisely because the economy is so linked to other realms, it is clear that changes in economic structures - and in the meaning of those structures - will continue to shape and be shaped by gender.

Foraging, Horticultural, and Herding Societies (20,000 BCE-1800 CE)

Early human cultures are often labeled "hunting and gathering" cultures, but recent archaeological and anthropological research indicates that both historical and contemporary hunter-gatherers actually depend much more on gathered foods than hunted meat. (This is not true for Arctic cultures

where tl for cont by analJ chemica amount: analysis cooked Cates th, much of onged ra 1mimals human i "forager

This re r,efineme Ing meat focture - search of mals. It 1 about tw tools inc t:ypes oft not neces tasks sue working hbnes-s1 for the e:

f(mmenta This en

pi.·ehistori, in develo1 IJClSCS. If h possibly h tilothers tc bt,dy fur c

· mothers? J of the WOI have devel ~hey were i ~himpanze

' J

, with all family labor. " has come from ncepts are highly as "work" while >r "housework." tnd nurturing of all, though they individuals who omen's activities 1ents such as the tributing to eco- garded as work, ly done by men, ,kill, and effort. : gender, and in , between men's )men's work. In foals who were to females were tlyze more fully 1panied by and ,my, for women ealth as did the Wer wages, this

:ts of economic , and they have >e valued - and 1en or women. me parts of the ter realms, it is ming of those

ng

'ing" cultures, ates that both d much more 1.rctic cultures

Economic Life 5 7

where the opportunities for gathering are very limited.) This can be assessed for contemporary hunter-gatherers by observation, and for historical ones by analysis of the wear patterns on stone tools (termed microwear analysis), chemical analysis of hominid and human bones which reveals the relative amounts of animal and plant foods eaten (termed stable isotopic analysis), analysis of the food remains in fossilized human feces, and analysis of cooked and uncooked food remains, primarily bones. Such analysis indi- cates that the majority of hunter-gatherers' diet comes from plants,,and that much of the animal protein in their diet comes from foods gathered or scav- enged rather than hunted directly, for it consists of insects, shellfish, small animals caught in traps, and animals killed by other predators. Thus early human societies might be more accurately termed "gatherer-hunters" or ''foragers," a term now favored by scholars.

This reanalysis of the importance of hunting has been accompanied by a refinement in the timetable of early human development. The need for hunt- ing meat was earlier described as an impetus for bipedalism and tool manu- facture - man the hunter stood up on two feet to look over the savanna in search of large game animals and then crafted stone points to kill those ani- mals. It is now recognized that bipedalism predated tool manufacture by nbout two million years, and that along with pointed flaked stones early tools included spheroid pieces probably for grinding, cracking, or other

. types of plant processing. Those pointed flaked stones themselves were also ; i1ot necessarily spear points, but may hav;e been used for a wide variety of tasks such as chopping vegetables, peeling fruits, cracking open shells, or Working leather. Evidence of animal killing and consumption - stones and ,bones - survives better than that of plant consumption, and was responsible for the earlier emphasis on hunting, but mor-e sophisticated analysis has how given a more balanced picture. The most important element of early

uman success was flexibility and adaptability, with gathering and hunting robably varying in their importance from year to year depending on envi- nmental factors and the decisions of the group. This emphasis on adaptability has led a number of archaeologists and ehistorians to speculate whether women might have been more influential developing early human culture than the "man the hunter" model sug- ts. If hunting was not the impetus for bipedalism, what was? Could it ssibly have been food-sharing, and the need for hominid and early human thers to carry their babies, a task made more difficult as humans lost the y fur characteristic of other primates that allows infants to grasp their thers? Might the first "tool" have been a sling of some sort-found in all he world's cultures - for carrying an infant? Might early human females , developed the first tools for harvesting and processing food ,because were more adept at this than human males, in the same way that female

tnpanzees are more adept at fishing termites out of nests and cracking

5 8 Economic Life

nuts? Questions such as these have also led to a broader questioning of the entire '~man. the hunter/woman the gatherer" dichotomy; in some of the world's cultures, such as the Agta of the Philippines, women hunt large game, and in numerous others, women a,i:e involved in some types of hunting, such as driving herds of animals tow?i;d a cliff or compound or throwing nets over them. Most foraging societies have some type of division of labor by sex - and also by age, with children and older people responsible for differ- ent tasks than adult men or women - but this is not universal, and the stone tools that remain from the Paleolithic period give no clear evidence of who used them. In the cultures in which women hunt, they either carry their chil- dren in slings or leave them with other family members, so that cultural norms, rather than biological necessity, must be seen as the basis for male hunting. ·

Answering questions about early tool use and the prehistoric division of labor is difficult because the sources on which to base an answer are scarce, and open to widely varying interpretations. Because direct evidence is so limited and difficult to interpret, scholars use a number of other types of sources when asking questions about the gender division of labor in prehis- tory: comparisons with other primates; observation of the few foraging soci- eties left in the world; reports from ethnographers and missionaries of foraging societies in the last several centuries; written sources from cultures that existed centuries later in the same area.

Although the division of labor by sex in foraging cultures is not strict or uniform, in most of them women appear to have been primarily responsible for gathering plant products, so that they may also have been the first to plant seeds in the ground rather than simply harvesting wild grains. Early crop planters began to select the seeds tliey planted in order to get more productive crops, and, by observation, learned the optimum times and places for planting. This early crop planting was done by individuals using hoes and digging sticks, and is often termed horticulture to distinguish it from the later agriculture using plows. In some places, digging sticks were weighted with stones to make them more effective, although earlier archae- ologists thought these stones were the killing parts of war-clubs. Intentional crop-planting developed first in the Near East (about 8500 BCE) and slightly later in China (about 7500 BCE); it developed significantly later in central America (3500 BCE), the Andes region (3500 BCE), and eastern North America (2500 BCE). Domesticated crops spread from these areas to much of the rest of the world, though there may also have been independent domestication in west Africa, east Africa, and New Guinea. At roughly the same time, certain animals were domesticated in parts of the world where they occurred naturally, and then, like crops, taken elsewhere. Dogs were the first, then sheep and goats, and somewhat after this cattle, water buffalo, horses, llamas, and poultry.

··--···-·--·------------------"

Horticult plots of Ian North Amt years, with these cultm appear to h: group mem and transpc vessels, bast

In some I duced enouf area. Wome time, and he primarily cei age. (The pr or digest, ar three or fom to suppress , even withou at more freq leading to a exact mecha1 in the death raising villag The division cultural soci1 stress diversi

Where terr tion became domesticated tern termed f tary, and so t to travel lon1 pastoralists b were pastoral animals, and formed the bi marriage, wit marriages thr labor would I for brideweal

In areas oft /luch as the lh

oning of the some of the r large game, unting, such rowing nets of labor by le for differ- 1.d the stone !nee of who :y their chil- hat cultural sis for male

division of : are scarce, dence is so ter types of ,r in prehis- raging soci- ionaries of >m cultures

tot strict or responsible the first to ains. Early :> get more times and iuals using ;tinguish it ,ticks were ier archae- \ntentional nd slightly in central

.em North .s to much dependent mghly the ,he world tere. Dogs ttle, water

Economic Life 5 9

Horticulture can be combined quite easily with gathering and hunting as 1,lots of land are usually small; many cultures, including some of those in North America, remained mixed forager/horticulturist for thousands of years, with base camps returned to regularly during the growing season. In

· these cultures, and also in many horticultural groups in Africa, women appear to have retained control of the crops they planted, sharing them with ,;i.-oup members or giving them as gifts. They developed means of storing and transporting the harvested seeds, including skin bags, carved wooden vessels, baskets, and pottery.

In some parts of the world, horticulture and animal domestication pro- duced enough food to allow groups to settle more or less permanently in one area. Women no longer had to carry their small children with them all the time, and horticulture provided food that was soft enough for babies to eat --,- primarily cereals -which allowed women to wean their children at a younger age. (The primary foods of many foragers are hard for small children to eat 1)1' digest, and women in such cultures nurse their children until they are three or four. If nursing is a child's sole source of nutrition, lactation tends ro suppress ovulation in the mother, so that births are more widely spaced (wen without other methods of birth control.) Children may have been born nt: more frequent intervals and infant mortality may have decreased slightly, hiading to a growth in population. Though we cannot be sure about the mmct mechanism for this - whether an increase in the birth rate or a decrease In the death rate was the most important -factor - we do know that crop- rtiising villages, beginning in the Near East, began to grow quite rapidly.

· The division of labor by gender is just as difficult to ascertain in early horti- ~ultural societies as it is in foraging cultures, however, and .most scholars lltress diversity and adaptability over one single pattern.

Where terrain or climate made crop-planting difficult, animal domestica- . tion became the primary means of obtaining food; people raised flocks of ·. ~omesticated sheep, goats, cattle, reindeer or other grazing animals, a sys- tem termed pastoralism. In some areas pastoralism can be relatively seden-

. nuy, and so easily combined with horticulture, while in others flocks need tt, travel long distances from season to season to obtain enough food, so fiastoralists became nomadic. In eastern and southern Africa, many groups

:.Were pastoralists, with the men typically caring for cattle, the higher-status !).nimals, and the women caring for smaller ones such as goats. Cattle often fonned the bridewealth that husbands presented to their wives' families on marriage, with fathers and male elders retaining control over young men's marriages through their control of the cattle. (The introduction of wage labor would later upset this control as then the young men could buy cattle

:<for bridewealth or present this in some other form.) ·· · In areas of the world without large domesticable animals ( or with animals

r1uch as the llama that could not be trained to pull a plow) crops continued

I

I i I ij

I

I ; ' i

60 Economic Life

to be planted with hoes and digging sticks for millennia, and crop-raising remained primarily a women's task. Women in West Africa and South America grew and processed roots and tubers, and in North America and Mesoamerica they grew corn, beans, and squash. Because of this, women in these areas occasion,!lly inherited land or the rights to farm certain pieces of land directly, or boys inherited land through their mother's brothers, both of which are termed matrilineal systems-of inheritance. This division of labor and these systems of inheritance were often misunderstood by cultures that came into contact or conquered horticulturalists and then tried to enforce their own division of labor. In North America and Africa, for example, Europeans assumed men were the primary agricultural producers, and developed various plans to make indigenous men better farmers; they often introduced patrilineal inheritance laws at the same time. Such schemes gen- erally failed to convince men that they should farm, though in some places male elites welcomed patrilineal inheritance.

Agricultural Societies (7000 BCE-1800 CE)

The division of labor by gender in foraging and horticultural societies around the world was linked in complex ways with other sources of gender distinctions, such as family structure, religion, and cultural practices, so the level of female subordination in such societies varied widely. Some of the world's most egalitarian cultures were foragers or horticulturalists, as were some in which female subordination was the most extreme. This diver- sity was less in cultures that adopted plow agriculture, which was developed first in the Middle East beginning around 4000 BCE. As noted briefly in chapter 1, plowing was almost universally a male task, with women han- dling plows only in emergencies or in cultures in which men were gone for much of the growing season, such as coastal areas of Spain, Portugal, or Norway in which men left on long fishing voyages. The earliest depictions of plowing are on Mesopotamian cylinder seals, and they invariably show men with the cattle and plows. At the same time that cattle began to be raised for pulling plows and carts rather than for meat, sheep began to be raised primarily for wool. Spinning thread and weaving cloth became pri- marily women's work; the Egyptian Old Kingdom hieroglyph for weaving is, in fact, a seated woman with a shuttle, and a Confucian moral saying asserts that "men plow and women weave." ·

Though in some ways this arrangement seems complementary, with each sex doing some of the necessary tasks, in fact plow agriculture was one of the factors that increased gender hierarchy. Men's responsibility for plow· ing led to their being favored as inheritors of family land and the rights to · farm communally held land. Plow agriculture increased the amount of food .

available, store that metal equ plows anc Ownershi it) became oped mo1 resources became he land by hi. military p between tl

We will terms of e, In agricult would not Nonelite v dose by th ehildren, tl fields and 1 the Indian, [~Oor worn, most hono clown so tt their faces. pt·imary w< quarters w. l~w-status ,

Women's JJ:ovided lit

· ijQi as they ·&pinning w

. ltflre simple <~combinec

gland, th< used to

Wheel. Amo. Jfaor; girls w W@re given a \\{Ould perfo

• · ;t(Along wit b)!'tndeinai

i itfaility to mo

i crop-raising :a and South America and 1is, women in :tain pieces of thers, both of :sion of labor cultures that ed to enforce for example, Jducers, and rs; they often schemes gen- , some places

CE)

tral societies :es of gender ctices, so the Jy. Some of lturalists, as !. This diver• 1s developed ~d briefly in Nomen han• ere gone for Portugal, or ;t depictions riably show began to b@

. began to bl! became pl'i• for weavin · toral sayin

v, with ea was one y for plo he rights unt of foo

Economic Life 6 I

;I vailable, but also increased the amount of goods needed to produce and ,;tore that food, including animals, storage bins and containers, and wood or metal equipment. This economic gap between families that owned lands and plows and those that did not widened, and social differentiation increased. Ownership and control of property (and oft~ of the persons who worked it) became the basis of power for political and religious elites, who devel- oped more complex legal and normative structures to determine how resources would be owned, managed, and distributed. These elites generally became hereditary aristocracies, who sought to maintain their control of l;wd by highlighting what made them distinctive - connections with a deity, 111ilitary prowess, "natural" superiority - and to maintain the distinction between themselves and everyone else by regulating sexual relations.

We will trace the control of sexuality in more detail in chapter 8, but in l!irms of economic life, the laws and norms regulating social differentiation !n agricultural societies often required elite women to work at tasks that would not take them beyond the household or outside of male supervision. Nonelite women also tended toward work that could be done within or .tlose by the household, such as cooking, cloth production, and the care for thildren, the elderly, and small animals; men's work, such as clearing new {folds and plowing, took them further away. A special program set up under !'he Indian emperor Ashoka in the third century BCE, for example, supported loor women by paying them to spin and weave in their own homes; the

1st honorable among them we;e to bring their work into the palace at wn so they would not be seen, with royal officials forbidden to look at

•tiir faces. Ideals of seclusion even shaped attitudes toward women whose imary work was sexual; high-status courtesans lived.in special women's

1ters where they might receive training in music or other skills, while v-status women sold sex publicly in the streets. \Xlomen's tasks were generally not valued as highly as those of men and wided little access to resources; this in turn shaped the work women could , as they were not able to purchase more expensive tools or supplies. 1ming was thus the perfect women's occupation, for the tools required re simple and inexpensive, and it could be easily taken up or put down, and {(->mbined with other tasks such as minding children or preparing meals. In

and, the female branch of a family was termed the "distaff" side, after the used to hold flax or wool in spinning before the invention of the spinning ~t. Among the Aztecs, women spun feathers as well as cotton and maguey

girls were given spindles and shuttles at their birth ceremony while boys given a shield and four arrows, all of these symbols of the activities they cf perform as adults in service to the Aztec state.

g with gender distinctions in production, there were also distinctions e in agricultural societies. Trade requires access to trade goods and the

lfoy to move about, both of which were more available to men. Male heads

I l

l I

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I

lc9ntrol over the products of their household, . or,\harvested by female family members as well as

. aves, in.ts of both genders. Because of this, and because women's aibility ,toitravel was often limited by cultural norms about propriety and

· respectability, men became the primary,Jpders in most agricultural socie- ties. This was particularly true for long-distance traders, who sent or took items of great value such as precious metals, spices, perfumes, amber, and gems, and for those who handled large quantities of less valuable goods, such as grain, timber, and metals .. In some cultures women did trade locally, handling small retail sales of foodstuffs and other basic commodities, though in others men handled this small-scale distribution of goods as well.

These developments were not the same in all areas of the world, however. In West Africa and Southeast Asia, women were important traders at the regional and even international level for many centuries, handling both basic commodities such as cloth and luxuries such as pepper, betel, gold, and ivory. In the seventeenth-century Senegambia region of West Africa, for example, female traders - termed nharas in the local Crioulo and signares in French - had large households, extensive networks of trade, and many servants and slaves. They often married male European traders, who paid bridewealth to their new in-laws instead of receiving a dowry as was the custom in Europe. Attitudes toward trade and traders also varied widely in agricultural socie- ties, with some cultures holding individuals who made their living this way in high esteem, and others regarding them as at best a necessary evil.

Even in cultures in which there was a significant amount of trade, the most important form of wealth was possession of land and the people who worked it; this remained the case from the earliest development of agricul- ture until the nineteenth century in most parts of the world and until today in many areas. As we have seen, systems,of inheritance in plow-using cul- tures tended to favor sons over daughters, so that men generally predomi- nated in this aspect of economic life as well. Sons were not always available, however, and many inheritance schema turned next to brothers, nephews, grandfathers, or any other male relative. In other cultures, close relatives were favored over those more distant, even if this meant allowing daughters to inherit. Thus the drive to keep property within the family - however "family" was defined- resulted in women inheriting, owning, and in some cases managing significant amounts of wealth. (This continues to today, of course; lists of the "hundred most wealthy people" generally include some women, most of them rulers or heiresses.) In many instances women were simply conduits of wealth from one generation to another or from one family to another on marriage, but in others they were able to be more active, buying and selling property. The gender hierarchy thus intersected with the wealth hierarchy in complex ways, and in many cultures age and marital status also played a role. In many European and African cultures, for example, widows

were largely . often under t

Because in ing power of labor, leisure r ranee in the aristocracy n activities; no their lands 01 cultures, eco certain typei Jews in Eur praised for < ings. Evens upper-caste chem; this w their wives , women wer neighbors in highly as th«

Foraging, economic a, world; not t are only a ft tkulturalist: their numb~ world's peo social patte

· Hon depenc ,;;eligious le2 •i\l} did the a aontinuities

rget how is also im

n a base o

ousehold, ts well as women's

•riety and ral socie- 't or took nber, and le goods, le locally, s, though II. however. 'rs at the oth basic nd ivory. ~xample, French- ants and vealth to Europe. al socie- this way

ade, the pie who agricul- :il today ing cul- redomi- 'ailable, !phews, datives ughters

n were, family buying wealth us also ridowrt

Economic Life 6 3

were largely able to control their own property, while unmarried sons were often under their father's control even if they were adults.

Because in agricultural societies wealth was based primarily on the earn- ing power of the land and people under one's control and not on one's own labor, leisure rather than work was a mark of status. In some cases, such as Prance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centmii~s, members of the hereditary aristocracy might actually be prohibited from engaging directly in business nctivities; nobles in France were required' to live off the rents and income of their lands or lose the exemption from taxation that nobles enjoyed. In other cultures, economically productive work was viewed as less important than certain types of intellectual work, such as studying sacred texts. Among Jews in Europe or upper-caste Hindus in India, for example, men were praised for devoting themselves to prayer and the study of religious writ- ings. Even scholars have to eat, of course, which was not a problem for upper-caste Hindu men whose families were wealthy enough to support them; this was also the case with many Jewish men, and in other instances their wives worked to support them and the family. This meant that Jewish women were often more economically independent than their Christian iteighbors in premodern Europe, but their activities were still not valued as highly as those of their scholarly husbands.

Foraging, horticulture, pastoralism, and agriculture remained the primary t1conomic activities for most people throughout the entire history of the

,World; not until 2008 did half of the earth's population live in cities. There !tire only a few foraging groups in very isolated"areas and slightly more hor- dculturalists and pastoralists left in the world today, but just 100 years ago

their numbers were much greater, and at that point the vast majority of the 1World's people still made their living directly through plow agriculture. The :Hocial patterns set in early agricultural societies,- with most of the popula- tion dependent farmers, a small group of merchants, skilled artisans, and religious leaders, and rule by a hereditary aristocracy - lasted for millennia, M did the agricultural gender division of labor. It is important to keep these ~ontinuities in mind as we look at later economic changes, for it is easy to ;forget how slowly economic developments altered the lives of most people. ;It is also important to remember that later dramatic economic changes built

a base of gender divisions that had been in place for a very long time.

Slavery (7000 BCE-1900 CE)

Javery predates written records, and was a standard aspect of many world i(lU!tures throughout most of their history; in many societies slaves made up \t"significant share or even the majority of the population. Slaves included tmptives of war, raids, and abductions, as well as people enslaved for debt,

64 Economic Life

sold by their families, or who sold themselves into slavery because of extreme poverty. In some places slaves were largely from nearby areas, while in oth- ers organized slave trading existed across huge distances. The labor that slaves did was highly variable; in ~ome places, as on the sugar and cotton plantations of Americas, slaves primarily worked in producing cash crops on a large scale, but more often they did every kind of work that free people did, and often alongside them: farmed small plots of land, carried out domestic work, produced goods for sale, worked for wages, cared for chil- dren, and so on. In some societies, including the Byzantine and Ottoman empires, male slaves had positions of power and influence, such as army generals, estate managers, or government officials. Slaves functioned as items of conspicuous consumption as well. Large numbers of slaves marked one as a person of wealth, particularly in status-conscious cities, whether this was first-century Rome, seventeenth-century Batavia (in modern Java), or nineteenth-century Mombasa, while slaves from far away indicated that one was able to afford exotic luxury goods. Wealthy households in Renaissance Italy, for example, frequently included a slave or two from east- ern Europe or Africa, who were sometimes included in portraits of their male or female owners along with imported carpets, pearls, and jewelry.

Gendered norms of behavior often did not apply to slaves. In parts of the world where women were secluded, for example, slave women often worked out in public; their labor at such tasks as getting water from wells allowed nonslave women to remain indoors. In the plantation slavery of the American south, female slaves worked alongside male slaves in the fields, clearly not included in conceptualizations that understood "women" to be frail and delicate. Slave women's agricultural labor did not always mark a break from gender norms, however. In· sub-Saharan Africa, women produced the bulk of food, making women slaves often too valuable to sell; thus two-thirds of the slaves exported to the New World were men, while women were instead retained as farm workers (and wives) in Africa. The transatlantic slave trade further enhanced women's share of food production, and also increased' the trade in slaves within many parts of Africa. Free men and women, ex-slaves, and occasionally even people who were still slaves acted as slave-traders in Africa and Latin America, responding to the changing demands for labor as the extraction and production for various commodities shifted.

Slavery is not simply a method of organizing labor, of course, but also a method through which a labor force can be reproduced. In some slave systems, reproduction was not of great concern to slave-owners, who simply bought new slaves as others died. In Brazil, for example, less than one-third of the African slaves were women and conditions on sugar plantations were espe• cially brutal; thus many more slaves died than were born, and importation continued at a high rate. In North America, "natural increase" came to be more important than continued importation in increasing the slave population;

of the r NewW world,. as secor and pm althoug legal stf as we l inherite rnothen along v lives, tt greatly. that em ing chil caused 1

Slave1 teenth c ir was re ~harecr< individt

of extreme b.ile in 0th- labor that md cotton cash crops free people arried out :d for chil- l Ottoman has army ctioned as 'es marked s, whether lernJava),

. icated that 1eholds in from east- ts of their ewelry. arts of the en worked ls allowed American :learly not : frail and 1reak from d the bulk )-thirds of ire instead ilave trade reased the

;vere es !1.portati :ime to opulati

Economic Life 6 5

of the millions of people who were taken from Africa to be slaves in the New World, only 5 percent went to North America. In Africa, the Muslim world, and Southeast Asia, enslaved women were often part of households, as secondary wives, concubines;,or servants. They thus increased the wealth and power of their owner/husbands through their work and their children, although under Islamic law those children would be legally free, as the legal status of children followed that of their father. This was not the case, as we have seen, in the. slave societies of the Americas, where children inherited their "condition of servitude," as the law described it, from their mothers. Ignoring the father increased the likelihood that childbearing, along with agricultural labor, would be a central part of slave women's lives, though the number of children who survived to adulthood varied greatly. Evidence from the Caribbean, North America, and Africa suggests that enslaved women sometimes took steps to control their fertility, limit- ing childbirth through plants and other products that lessened fertility or caused miscarriages.

Slavery was officially prohibited in many parts of the world in the nine- 1:eenth century, and in most of the rest in the twentieth, although very often

i lt was replaced by other systems of economic and legal dependence, such as 11harecropping, indentured servitude, and debt peonage, which mired poor Individuals and families in exploitative systems. With the prohibition of 1llavery, female slaves became theoretically free secondary wives, concubines, it)t servants, but they were still unable to move freely or escape dreadful eonditions. Human rights organizations also note that actual slavery contin-

d long after it was officially banned, and may be still be found today. 1ey estimate that there are mote than 20 million children and adults held various forms of bondage, working in homes, factories, sugar-cane fields, 'litary units, and elsewhere. The largest category are women and girls traf-

ed for sex slavery, estimated at over half a million per year, an enterprise t is second only to drug trafficking in terms of global criminal activities. dern technology and business procedures, such as the web, cell-phones, money laundering, facilitate these transactions, just as "modern" rifles

d,shipping companies facilitated the slavery of plantation economies.

Capitalism and Industrialism (1500-2000)

' tation economies were one part of the capitalist economic system that ', ped in the early modern era. Economic historians often joke about the e "the rise of capitalism," as it is invoked to describe and explain quite

· d ,developments over a long period of time; no matter where you look,

I I' ~

i I I

66 Economic Life

capitalism always seems to be rising, seemingly independent of human agents,Jsor,t, of like bread dough. Some of this expansionism comes from the elastic meaning of capitalism, which generally includes private ownership of prnperty and the materials used to make or provide goods and services (what,economists call the "mea;_n,s of production"), wage labor, well-devel- oped financial institutions such-as banks, and large and complex forms of economic organization. All of these were present to some degree in many agricultural societies, but they, became increasingly important in Europe during .the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries, with income derived from capitalist business ventures eventually displacing landholding as the primary form of wealth. Capitalism developed first in long-distance trade - this is often termed "mercantile capitalism" - then in production. Capitalist production was initially carried out in households, but gradually workers were brought together into larger units eventually termed factories, and by the eighteenth century these factories began to use machines and new sources of power such as coal or water for their work, in what is termed "industrial capitalism" or industrialism.

At the same time that capitalism and industrialism were developing in Europe, Europeans were also traveling to the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Africa to settle and conquer. These phenomena - first capitalism and colo- nization, and then industrialism and imperialism - were intimately related. (Many other factors also played a role in European colonialism and imperi- alism, of course, such as religion and politics; we will discuss these in more detail in chapters 5 and 6.) Capitalist merchants often provided the impetus and the equipment for colonization, and many colonies were established to be both sources of raw materials and markets for trade goods. Consumer goods such as sugar and coffee produced in colonial areas were handled by international traders, who also bought, transported and sold large numbers of slaves primarily from Africa to produce these goods. Sugar and coffee plantations were like factories, producing one specific item to be sold as widely as possible. Capitalist production began first in cloth, using wool and linen from Europe, but by the nineteenth century cotton grown in colo- nial areas (or former colonial areas, such as the United States) was the most important material. European cotton cloth was shipped throughout the world, clothing slaves and agricultural workers on tropical plantations, and allowing those who profited from trade to buy consumer items from around the world.

European capitalism, including its gender patterns, grew out of the agri- cultural system that had developed in medieval Europe. During the Middle Ages, the household became the basic unit of production in most parts of Europe, a process some social historians label the "familialization of labor." The central work unit was the marital couple, joined by their children when they became old enough to work. Though in some parts of southern and

eastern Euroi:: Europe coupl, making the pr included indiv journeymen - couple and th,

During the tain products late productio including trai1 and size of sh specialized ec, guilds were m an apprentice traveled arom ried, opened , one died or g, one would be than men), th that pregnanc labor. Transit master crafts1 governing the but only the fifteenth cent to form their and loyalty. I with a maste work was no sixteenth cenc increasingly ;

·. which only rr . All of these

.- occasionally enterprises, n capitalism w,

· of productio wages only t were paid pe broken apar1 though they hired to pro, with the inve

endent of human m comes from the .vate ownership of :>ods and services labor, well-devel• complex forms of ,e degree in many ortant in Europe h income derived mdholding as tlrn g-distance trade - uction. Capitalist radually workers factories, and by , and new sources !rmed "industrial

ire developing in ia, Australia, and italism and colo• ttimately related, llism and imperi• 1ss these in more ided the impetus :re established to oods. Consumer were handled by Id large numbers ;ugar and coffee m to be sold as oth, using wool 1 grown in colo- es) was the most throughout the plantations, and ·ms from around

out of the agri• ring the Middle n most parts of :ation of labor." r children when ,f southern and

Economic Life 67

;,;1•;rern Europe extended families lived together, in central and northern l 11rope couples generally set up independent households upon marrying, nLd<ing the production unit also a residential unit. Urban households often

· induded individuals who were not family members - servants, apprentices, )0111.·neymen - but at their core in most parts of Europe was a single marital ,nuple and their children.

During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, urban producers of cer- i<l 111 products began to form craft guilds in many\t:ities to organize and regu-

,< b It production; guilds set the rules by which most items were manufactured, including training requirements, quality and price levels, hours of operation,

f111d size of shops. There were a few all-female guilds in cities with highly ~pedalized economies such as Cologne, Paris, and Rouen, but in general the ~11ilds were male organizations and followed the male life-cycle. One became

. tHI apprentice at puberty, became a journeyman four to ten years later, · flit veled around learning from a number of masters, then settled down, mar- ried, opened one's own shop and worked at the same craft full-time until '.l)ue died or got too old to work any longer. This process presupposed that (!lie would be free to travel (something that was more difficult for women tlrnn men), that on marriage one would acquire a wife as an assistant, and tluH pregnancy, childbirth, or child-rearing would never interfere with one's :lflhor. Transitions between these stages were marked by ceremonies, and Jrmster craftsmen were formally inscribed in guild registers and took part in Joverning the guild. Work continued to be carried out by a household unit, lntt only the male head of that unit was recognized officially. By the late Itlt:eenth century, journeymen began to resent the power of the masters and · form their own guilds with elaborate rituals reinforcing group identity

td · loyalty. Because women fit into guilds primarily through their relation ith a master craftsman - as his wife, daughters, or servants - and their

.. ork was not recognized fotmally, they did not organize separately. By the '.~lxteenth century journeymen resented even this informal participation, and :jiwrnasingly asserted that the most honorable workplace was the one in Which only men worked. :.; All of these factors shaped the development of capitalism. Though women t!ti'!JiJSionally invested in the new joint-stock companies and other capitalist ,iiftrprises, most of the merchants and traders in the first era of mercantile l<i1J;ir.alism were men, as were those who began to invest in capitalist forms

·• production. Urban investors often hired whole households, but paid tl!JCS only to the male head of household; in mining, for example, men

:I\\. paid per basket for ore, but it was expected that this ore would be litl'Oktn apart and washed, jobs that their wives, sisters, and children did, fh?cmgh they did not receive separate wages for their work. In households · 1:tO•tO produce cloth, women and children often spun while men wove,

th: the investor paying for the finished pieces. When wages were paid to

I

I

68 Economic Life

individuals,, ideas about the value of men's and women's labor and about the household as the proper economic unit shaped both wages and hiring prac- tices; women's wages for manufacturing tasks were generally about one-half to two-thirds those of men for the same or similar tasks, which sometimes meant that employers preferred them. Married women's wages were also less than those of widows for the same task, a war;e structure based on the idea that married women needed less because they Wad a husband to support them, not on an evaluation of the quality of their work.

Capitalist production challenged the monopoly of many guilds, and slowly more and more of the goods produced in Europe were made outside of guilds, but the ideas about work developed by the guilds carried over into capitalism. The most honorable trades were those in which few or no women worked, and the tasks that women did in their homes, which could be very labor intensive and time-consuming, were not considered work. Not work- ing for wages became a mark of middle-class status, so that women often hid the work they did, such as taking in boarders, or defined it as "house- keeping." Housekeeping itself became more elaborate, as international trade and then industrial production provided a steadily increasing amount of consumer goods to households in Europe and European households in the colonies. People purchased much more clothing, table linen, and bedding than they had earlier, and wealthier households now contained a vast array of new products: watches, snuff boxes, umbrellas, fans, paintings, silks and fine cottons from Asia, feathered hats, window curtains, tea tables, wall- and hand-mirrors, and writing desks. Most strikingly, Europeans ate very different foods - coffee, tea, and hot chocolate (prepared in public coffee- houses or their own homes), rum, and new types of fruits and vegetables. Their sugar consumption increased astronomically, from about 2 pounds a year in England in 1650 to almost 25 pounds in 1800. This new consumer culture provided opportunities for men and women to socialize in new ways, with men gathering in coffeehouses and women in the homes of their friends or relatives around a teapot. The increase in consumer goods also shaped the types of work available, as more shops were opened even in very small towns - an opportunity not limited to men the way work in guilds was - and wealthier households hired more - mostly female - servants to polish all that brass and wash all those windows. Domestic service became the most common form of paid work for women in western Europe in the nineteenth century and in Latin America in the twentieth.

Mercantile capitalism and the demand for consumer goods also influ- enced the gender division of labor in indigenous societies outside of Europe. For example, by the early seventeenth century in the eastern part of North America, native trading networks also involved Europeans, almost all of them men, who brought in goods of interest to both men and women - guns, rum, cloth, kettles, flour, needles, and tea. The Europeans were

primarily inten which came fo men's activitie~ imported good: women's hortic women's centn disrupted by th demands for sp factory jobs fc women were o brought them i was done forci government an

The growth, great breaks ir. ments that is t{ the industrial e terns. The sepa women to com tory work bee children. Youn 1)articularly in ble and they cc

;Jons - often g: .npart from th Supervisory pc to oversee the · as been expe

hine prod1 ented by

'tewomen chinery an< ndustrial d

pe andN uch of L

r World'\

and about the 'd hiring prac- bout one-half :h sometimes :es were also based on the 1d to support

guilds, and 1ade outside edover into rnowomen mld be very Not work- omen often as "house-

', ionaltrade ;I

·amount of olds in the id bedding ,vast array , silks and ,les, wall- sate very lie coffee- ~getables. pounds a :onsumer ewways, ir friends , shaped :ry small as-and olish all he most 1eteenth

) influ- ~urope. ·North ; all of ,men ... ; were

nconomic LlJt: o Y

primarily interested in furs for beaver hats and other articles ofclothimg, which came from animals hunted and trapped by men. This meant that men's activities often came to be more highly regarded as a source of imported goods, in contrast to earlier periods in which men's hunting and women's horticulture had been valued more equally. In tht1 Middle East; women's central role in spinning and weaving: for their own families was disrupted by the large-scale importation of cheap European cloth; European demands for specialized textiles such as fine silks and carpets provided some foctory jobs for women, but also for men; In colonial areas, indigenous women were often hired as domestic servants in white households, which brought them into intimate contact with colonizing families; sometimes this was done forcibly, as in Australia where Aboriginal girls were seized by the Hovernment and placed in white homes as domestic servants.

The growth of industrialism has traditionally been regarded as one of the weat breaks in economic history - it is one of the few economic develop- ments that is termed a "revolution" - but in terms of gender arrangements, the industrial economies of Europe and North America built on earlier pat- rcms. The separation of workplace from home made it difficult for married women to combine factory work with their family responsibilities, and fac- tory work became the province of men, younger unmarried women, and fhildren. Young women were often the first to be hired as factories opened,

'>particularly in cloth production, because their work was seen as less valua- .ble and they could be hired more cheaply. Older daughters - and, less often,

ms - often gave part of their wages to their parents even when they lived part from them, so that vestiges of the household economy remained. upervisory positions were reserved for older men, who were often expected o oversee the morals and leisure-time, activities of their workers as fathers HlS been expected to earlier. In some heavy industries, such as steel and 1achine production, almost all of the workers were male; work was thus

,'ogmented by gender both within factories and across industries. In some t11•eas segmentation by race or national origin was added to that of gender;

ythe 1880s in the tobacco industry of North Carolina, for example, black n handled the bales of tobacco, black women stemmed tobacco leaves,

hite women operated cigarette-making machines, and white men repaired achinery and supervised the entire operation. . Industrial development in the rest of the world occurred later than in

;urope and North America: in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries much of Latin America and parts of Asia, and in other areas not until er World War II. In some ways industrialism elsewhere followed the opean pattern, with women and children paid lower wages and supervi-

positions going to men, but it was also shaped by local conditions and ditions. In Japan, for example, though both labor organizations and litical leaders opposed women working in factories and urged them to

70 Economic Life

stay home to become "good wives, wise mothers," their lower wages mitle them attractive ito factory owners; in 1909, 62 percent of the factory labor force was female, working primarily in silk production. Some of these women had been sold by their families to factory owners, and the cloth and clothing they made earned the foreign exchange that made possible the later development of heavy industry in Japan, such as the manufacture of steel and automobiles. In Medellin, Colombia, young women were the initial workforce in the city's booming textile mills in the early twentieth century, but factory owners increasingly favored men. They enforced strict codes of discipline on their female workers and manipulated public perceptions about women's chaste and unchaste behavior, so that factory labor came to be seen as "improper" for women. By the 1960s, almost all factory workers were men, and the factory owners claimed credit for transforming Colombia into a bastion of Catholic piety and high moral standards. A similar decline in women's industrial work occurred at the same time in urban Chile, also linked to anxieties about morality and modernity; here women often kept working in their homes, but for much lower wages.

Wherever and whenever it occurred, industrialism often led to the deskill- ing of certain occupations, in which jobs that had traditionally been done by men were made more monotonous with the addition of machinery and so were redefined and given to women, with a dramatic drop in status and pay; secretarial work, weaving, and shoemaking are prominent examples of this. Like the definition of "work," the definition of "skill" is often gendered, and women were excluded from certain jobs, such as glass-cutting, because they were judged clumsy or "unskilled," yet those same women made lace, a job that required an even higher level of dexterity and concentration than glass-cutting.

This link between gender and "skill" had actually begun in the preindus- trial period, though in these cases the addition of machinery often made jobs "male" instead of "female." Both brewing and stocking knitting, for exam- ple, were transformed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries into male- dominated occupations in some parts of Europe. When knitting frames and new brewing methods were introduced, men began to argue that they were so complicated women could never use them; in reality they made brewing and knitting faster and increased the opportunities for profit. Women were limited to small-scale brewing and knitting primarily for their own family's use. Links between gender and "skill" have continued in the postindustrial economy as well. Using a typewriter was gendered female in the early twen• tieth century, but working with computers has been gendered male and accompanied by an increase in pay and status. This regendering of work on a keyboard has been accomplished by associating computers with mathe- matics and machinery, fields viewed as masculine that girls have been dis- couraged from studying; advertisements in computer magazines often

portray women computer syste1

The conditi01 with 12 hour d Such condition: shorter hours at zations varied ir and the United and, like the ear or cheapening t wages high eno1 so that their wiv the home. This class women ha ported, which aJ l~cntury was of ''sweated" labo :1hops" under gl

In continental ulong industrial, Wing political p~

'. Jlltmbers, partic A1·gentina, bega ln general, how, ~omen, at times ' ore often opp<

ere harder to < n dues, thei1 tings, and tl to challenge n membersl

with men if they we.

i ing recc combine ·cal auth · and otl 'ted, th1

beca11 ,i,alizati

T wages made factory labor

ome of these the cloth and ;sible the later ,.cture of steel !re the initial tieth century, trict codes of : perceptions abor came to tory workers ngColombia milar decline n Chile, also n often kept

) the deskill- 1een done by nery and so tus and pay; 1ples of this. n gendered, ng, because . made lace, :ration than

.e preindus• tmadejobs , for exam- ; into male• frames and : they were le brewing )men were m family's tindustrial arlytwen• male and f work on th mathe~ been di

nes ofte

Economic Life 7 1

i">rtray women at the keyboard only if they are emphasizing ho~Jleasy a , l)J11puter system is to use.

The conditions of work under early industrialism were often horrendous, with 12 hour days and dangerous machinery and chemicals very common. l,11ch conditions led workers to develop labor organizations that sought ~liorter hours and better wages and working conditions. These labor organi- t,1tions varied in their gender politics. In some countries, such as Great Britain ,111d the United States, labor unions organized primarily along craft lines, rrn<l, like the earlier craft guilds, often opposed women's labor as dishonoring or cheapening their craft. They argued in favor of a "family wage," that is,

· 1.v,1ges high enough to allow married male workers to support their families "JO that their wives could concentrate on domestic tasks and not work outside

. \he home. This family wage was only an ideal, however, and most working-

. tlitss women had to work at whatever was available to keep families sup- ported, which after the invention of the sewing machine in the late nineteenth

ti;t~nt:ury was often piecework for very low wages, what is often termed '..u~weated" labor. They worked in their own homes or in crowded "sweat-

ops" under ghastly conditions. J n continental Europe and Latin America, labor unions generally organized ong industrial lines and had closer connections with socialist and other left- Jog political parties. This made them slightly more open to including women ('!11bers, particularly as some socialist parties, such as those in Germany and 'Bentina, began to advocate for women's greater political and legal rights. gtmeral, however, labor organizations continued to be ambivalent toward men, at times encouraging their inclusion or separate women's unions, but re often opposing women's work and trivializing women's issues. Women .'C harder to organize than men, as their wages were often too low to pay \m dues, their family responsibilities prevented them from attending union Ctings, and they had been socialized to view their work as temporary and to challenge male authorities. Women made up a much smaller share of

!011 membership than they did of the workforce, though they often partici- t(1d with men in strikes, demonstrations, and protests for better conditions,

if they were not members. Separate women's unions were formed in countries, however; by 1900, for example, women's unions in the o, coffee, and textile industries in Mexico and Puerto Rico were

ing recognition and the right to bargain collectively. Demands by · combined with paternalistic ideas about women's health on the part

tditical authorities led to laws limiting the hours of work by women in 'ties and other protective measures. Because men's hours were not simi- 4imited, these laws lessened women's desirability as workers, but they a,tely became the basis for more generalized protective legislation.

trialization was a very uneven process. In some parts of the. world ence agriculture remained the primary economic activity until well into

)

72 Economic Life

the twentieth century, although the gender structures in many nonindbstrial areas were also shaped by industry and international trade. For example, international commercial networks began to shape some east African socie- ties• in the eighteenth century, with goods acquired by male hunters such as ivory and ·horns often allowing them to acquire still more wives, slaves, and cattle. There seem to have been fewer women traders in these areas than in western Africa, although women's lives were also influenced by trade in that they were the major agricultural producers, and trade with the New World brought in new crops such as maize, cassava, and groundnuts. Some of these crops, especially cassava (also called manioc, and the source of tapioca), increased women's work load, as the roots needed to be cooked and pounded in order to make edible starch, a process that often took days. Cassava was also introduced into western Africa during this period, providing an incen- tive for the maintenance of polygynous, slave-owning households that included many women who could share the work. In the nineteenth century, commercial agriculture for export and mining began in many parts of Africa, both of them employing many more men than women. Men left their vil- lages for years at a time to grow cocoa, mine diamonds, or build railroads, leaving women to continue subsistence horticulture or agriculture. This same pattern developed in many parts of Latin America, with men migrat- ing to large plantations, cities, or other countries in search of paid labor, and women remaining to care for children and the elderly and to engage in unpaid agricultural work. Movements of agrarian reform in twentieth- century Latin America sought to broaden land ownership, but, as had ear- lier unions, they emphasized the male-headed household as the basis of this more equitable economy; men were urged to have respect for their wives, but women's independent ownership of land was not a key aim.

Corporations, the State, and the Service Economy (1900-2010)

The twentieth century saw dramatic changes in the gender division of labor in many parts of the world, though these changes were not the same every- where. In contrast to areas of the world that industrialized first, such as England, the United States, and Japan - where young women were the first to be hired as factories opened - the introduction of wage labor in agricul- ture, mining, and industry in other parts of the world in the twentieth cen- tury provided jobs initially for boys and men. Men traveled to plantations, mines, and cities, leaving women responsible for producing food largely through subsistence agriculture. Cash crops for export took the bestland, so women were left with increasingly infertile land on which to support bur- geoning populations. This problem was most acute in Africa, exacerbated

by the fact developmen the primary agriculture I: cultures wh, 1980s did th at women, s techniques, <

In the last more recentl profitable in, tiles rather ti ingly favored would work 1990s, perha world marke h1g zones" th ments-were young wome work, thougl: to their famil Were so low ti Into prostitut The internati, 1,nh century - tion was tole1

The maven tury was slov tmd of the cer generally ben professionals Other women vr.ies outside t two systems; 1 yet they were

These shifo dhe decisions ? Md work in

Hrlier by sta1 ganda campai Wages and fac the paid labor

••· §Uffrage in mi

----····-1 ~dustrial ~amplr, (n socic \such a~ yes, and I h . 1t an 111 , . I pn trnt r World bf these

lentury, \Africa,

\tt:~a~!: Thiij

igrat, r, and-'

f, ge in tied,, dear, pf thiij \wives,

very, ~ha» r first hcul, ! I cen, 1- !101181

~gely I id, so l but" i tated

Economic Life 7 3 -;•,:

·, by the fact that, as noted above, colonial governments and international \!ltwelopment agencies assumed - based on Western practices - that meri.Ywere < dw primary agricultural producers; they thus often sought to "modernize" ••· ijf{l'iculture by teaching men new methods of farming or processing crops in

'.iit\ltures where these tasks had always been done by women. Only in the '. l 980s did the focus begin to shift somewhat to smaller-scale projects directed · iii women, such as small irrigation systems, improvements in stock-raising . 11•dmiques, credit associations, and micro-loan programs.

In the last several decades, the composition of the industrial labor force in : mme recently industrialized countries has shifted. By the 1980s, the most

••·-• [Wofitable industries were those in electronics, clothing, chemicals, and tex- f tiles rather than heavier industries, and multinational corporations increas- : IHl!IY favored women - and in some areas children - as workers because they

would work for lower wages and were viewed as less likely to protest. By the · 1990s, perhaps as many as 80 percent of the workers in factories geared for .:Wt,dd markets - often established in "free trade zones" or "export process- Cfn1; zones" that received special tax and other legal exemptions from govern- 'immts - were young women. Particularly in East, Southeast, and South Asia, rnung women were as likely as young men to migrate to cities in search of work, though they were more likely to send the majority of their wages home

, their families, even if this left them little to live on. In some cases, wages t1t:e so low that women also turned to prostitution, or were recruited directly t·o prostitution in their villages with the promise of a good job in the city. 1e international commercial sex trade grew dramatically in the late twenti- h century - often in the "free trade zones" or other areas where prostitu-

flon was tolerated - providing high profits for those who organized it. The movement of women into the paid labor force in the twentieth cen-

ltry was slowest in the Muslim countries of the Middle East, where at the ~•nd of the century women formed the smallest share of the paid labor force, jrnerally between 2 and 10 percent. (Many of these were highly educated }wofessionals such as teachers and health-care workers, trained to assist {1d1er women in sex-segregated settings.) Young women in Muslim coun- l!'ics outside the Middle East, such as Malaysia, were caught between these fWo systems; their labor in factories was essential to their families' survival, J•r;t they were also criticized for flouting Muslim norms. · These shifts in the organization of production have largely resulted from the decisions of multinational corporations, but the links between gender {111d work in the twentieth century were shaped to a greater extent than

dier by state policies. During World Wars I and II, government propa- iHtda campaigns in Europe and North America, combined with improved 1(1ges and facilities such as child-care centers, encouraged women to enter

the paid labor force to replace men who were fighting; the granting of female (ijuffrage in many countries right after World War I was in part thanks for

7 4 Economic Life

women's work as nurses and munitions workers. Though the demobilization of men once. the wars were over led to women being fired or encouraged to quit, the enormous losses among soldiers in the wars also made it impossible to return completely to prewar patterns. Wartime measures such as dining halls and child-care centers were generally ended, but the total percentage of women in the paid labor force in many European countries did not decline substantially.

In Japan and many countries of Europe, the 1920s and 1930s saw the devel- opment of authoritarian dictatorships, which transformed ideas about wom- en's "natural" role as wives and mothers into government policies promoting maternity and limiting women's employment. Particularly during the depres- sion of the 1930s, working women in both dictatorships and democracies were denounced as taking jobs away from men, and work was celebrated in vigor- ous propaganda campaigns as inherently masculine; in the United States, England, and elsewhere, women could get fired if they married. Despite this rhetoric, the expanding industrial sector required ever increasing numbers of workers, particularly as many countries mobilized for war in the late 1930s and 1940s. In Stalinist Russia and Fascist Italy, the number of single and mar- ried women in the labor force increased steadily, though the Nazi regime in Germany decided to solve its need for workers by drafting forced labor from occupied countries (most of it male) rather than encouraging women to work.

After World War II, most industrialized countries developed or expanded programs of social support for workers and families, including unemploy- ment insurance, paid maternity leave, and government-supported health care, in what was termed the.growth of the "welfare state." Some develop- ing countries also began such public social programs, although in the 1980s and 1990s many of these were cut back as countries were required by the World Bank and other financial organizations to restructure their econo- mies in order to lessen their foreign debt obligations and try to achieve higher rates of economic growth. (These measures, which tended to favor private enterprise and free trade and oppose government direction of the economy, are often described in economic terms as "neoliberal," although their most vocal proponents have included leaders generally thought of in political terms as conservative, such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.) Such measures generally provided more opportunities for men than for women, with economists and policy-makers around the wbrld not- ing a "feminization of poverty," as social programs were cut back and women were more likely to be unemployed or underemployed.

Along with the policies of corporations, national governments, and interna- tional economic agencies, the gender division of labor in the twentieth century was shaped by changes in communications technology and business practices that began to create a new type of economy, often termed "postindustrial." In the postindustrial economy, service, sales, and information transfer played a

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, practic Strial." I ! played

Economic Life 7 5

lH!H'e important role than production, with the office rather than the factory h1\:oming the primary place of work and more formal "white-collar" clothing ff'Placing more easily cleaned "blue-collar" clothing. In the first half of the l:/'!Hury, new types of jobs were created, such as secretaries, postal clerks, bank 11dk1rs, telegraph and telephone operators, and department store clerks, which fN'juired serving customers or assisting supervisors. These came to be viewed _ih especially appropriate for young women, who were hired for their appear- \lllce and pleasing demeanor as well as their abilities; in some areas women Who held these positions were fired if they married or planned to marry - men tn ~imilar positions were not - or if they became too old. Open discrimination lW nge or marital status continued in some "female" service occupations until 0H7 1970s in the United States and until today in some countries, with flight jlhmdants being the best-known example. Male managers and salesmen were ~ttll,lbrated for both competition and teamwork, and regarded as the brains of -· rporate culture, while women were its heart; women who became managers lrtm specialized in personnel or human relations. The growth in women's paid employment in industrialized countries that

ttn during the 1970s was also largely concentrated in lower-paying serv- 1' jobs such as office work, retail sales, child care, hairdressing, and clean- ~ (dubbed the "pink collar ghetto"), so that women's average full-time

11ings remained about two-thirds those of men. Sweden was the most Htarian industrialized country in terms of wages in the late twentieth tury, with female wages about 90 percent of male in 1985; Japan was the

Nt, with female wages about 43 percent of male, a situation that has 1sed many highly educated young Japanese women to leave Japan. The iwth of the service economy has also led many poorly educated women Hd children) to migrate transnationally in search of work as nannies, oids, nursing home attendants, and deaning ladies, especially from poorer 1nes such as the Philippines or Sri Lanka to Europe, North America, or

0 dch Middle Eastern states. '!'he postindustrial workforce is much more decentralized than the indus- hd economy, for computer and communications technology allows many iployees to work from their own homes or in small sweatshops rather ilU in large factories. Like the domestic production of much earlier centu- k, such work is often paid by the piece rather than the hour, which allows

I' greater flexibility but also greater exploitation as there is no limitation the workday and benefits such as health care are often not included. :uuse it can be combined with minding children and cooking, home pro- 1,;tion is often favored by women; in areas of the world where women ·, secluded, such work may be undertaken without disturbing religious or ltural norms. A few of those who work at home are highly educated and

l1thly paid "tele-commuters" in the burgeoning information industry, but 10/lt home or sweatshop labor involves routine data processing and other

7 6 Economic Life

forms of computerized office work or more traditional jobs such as making lace or gloves or shoes; along with the computer, the sewing m~chine con- tinues to be an effective tool of decentralization. '~

Work at home, whether using a sewing machine or a computer, is some- times included in official statistics, but often it is not, and it shades into what economists term the "informal," "underground," or "gray market" economy. Gray market transactions (called such to differentiate them from actually illegal black market transactions), such as the small-scale selling of commodities and services, often by street vendors, or small-scale loans, are intentionally unrecorded to avoid taxes and do not form part of official statistical measures, but are the only way people survive. Such work "off the books" is an important part of the economies of many developing countries and even some in Europe; estimates from Italy judge that the unrecorded exchange of goods and services has probably equaled that of the official economy since World War II. Women often predominate in the informal economy in many areas, selling commodities and services - including sex - on a small scale as they have for centuries. In some areas such work provides women with a decent income, though in many it barely sustains them and their families. As we have seen, in some cases such work, particularly in the sex trade, is essentially slave labor; in 2000, for example, the Central Intelligence Agency estimated that perhaps 50,000 women and children were being brought into the United States each year under false pretenses from countries such as Thailand, Mexico, and Russia, and forced to work as prostitutes or servants with their work unrecorded. Labor never paid or counted - such as that on family landholdings - must be added to this inten- tionally unrecorded labor to get a true picture of the work situation; in the same Muslim countries where women formed less than 10 percent of the paid labor force in the 1990s, for example, they are estimated to have per- formed 50 to 75 percent of the unpaid agricultural labor.

Evaluating the gender division of labor in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries must also take unpaid work within the household into account. Even in areas in which women made up more than half of the full-time labor force outside the household, such as the Soviet Union, women continued to do almost all of the household tasks. In the Soviet Union and Communist eastern Europe, shortages in foodstuffs and household goods such as soap meant that women had to spend hours each day (after their paid workday was done) standing in lines. Because of this "second shift," women were not free to attend Communist Party meetings or do extra work on the job in order to be promoted; in the 1970s, though women made up over 50 percent of the paid workforce in the Soviet Union, only 0.5 percent of managers and directors were women. This situation did not change when Communism ended in eastern Europe in 1989, though more women had time to spend in lines because they were more likely than men to be unemployed. The time

needed to obtf so that the sec even in relativ least twice as l children in th 1970s to advc as reinforcing

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Economic Life 7 7

!led to obtain basic consumer goods was much shorter in western Europe that the second shift was less onerous, but it was no less gender specific;

en bi relatively egalitarian Sweden, women who worked full-time spent at r,r twice as long on household tasks as men, and even longer if there were ldren in the house. This situation led some European feminists in the · Os to advocate "wages for housework," while others opposed this idea rninforcing an unfair gender division of labor.

1,ite the fact that we recognize economic life involves more than work, this J'iCer, like the vast majority of studies of gender and the economy, has focused narily.on work, perhaps because work is the most universal economic activ- or the one laden with the most meaning. As we have seen, though the der division of labor is variable and changing, it has always been present;

English peasants in the fourteenth century wished to describe the lack of I differentiation based on wealth and class at the beginning of human his- they still envisioned gender differences, singing: "When Adam delved and

span, who was then the gentleman?" It is difficult to predict how current omic trends, such as the introduction of market economies in the former

let bloc and in China, government-directed restructuring in developing ittries, and the globalization of production, services, and labor, will shape gender division of labor and access to wealth in the future. Union member- ' has dropped significantly from mid-twentieth century highs, but women · me unions, such as those of banana workers in Latin America, have joined as important labor organizers and made issues of gender equity part of

on efforts. Poverty was increasingly feminized in the late twentieth century, the numbers of women in traditionally male occupations, including highly

d professional and management positions, also increased, and women's tage earnings relative to those of men have crept up. (In 2008 in the US,

en earned 77 cents for every dollar men earned, up from 58 cents in 2.) In addition, the increasingly global nature of business and dramatic

kis of boom and bust led men's work in many areas to become "feminized," t is, not bound by long-term contracts or providing much -job security. ether the interactions of these and other changes will eventually end the der division of labor, or at least make it less significant for large numbers of

·1ple throughout the world, remains to be seen.

FURTHER READING

·aminations of the role of gender in economic life were initially conceptu0

zed primarily as studies of women's work, and this focus has continued in 1th research; until very recently, most studies of men's work did not rec- n ize their subjects as men or use gender as a tool of analysis, so they have

7 8 Economic Life

not been included here. In terms of theoretical underpinnings, the feminist critique of Marxist analysis, which began during the 1970s~ -is particularly important, especially in its explorations of the relations between gender and class hierarchies in economic matters. See, for example, Heide Hartmann, "The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union," Capital and Class, 8 (1979), 1-33 and "The Family as the Locus of Gender, Class and Political Struggle: The Example of Housework," Signs, 6 (1981), 366-94; Joan Kelly, "The Doubled Vision of Feminist Theory" in her Women, History and Theory ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 51-64. More recent considerations of these issues include Leonore Davidoff, Worlds· Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class (New York: Routledge, 1995); Mary Murray, The Law of the Father: Patriarchy in the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (London: Routledge, 1995); Laura L. Prader and Sonya 0. Rose, Gender and Class in Modern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996); Elizabeth Priigl, The Global Construction of Gender: Home-Based Work in the Political Economy of the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); Marilyn Waring, Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth (2nd edn., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000); Johanna Brenner, Women and the Politics of Class (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000).

On foraging, horticultural, and pastoralist societies, see Janet D. Spector, What This Awl Means: Feminist Archaeology at a Wahpeton Dakota Villege (St Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1994); Caroline Brettel and Carolyn Sargent, eds., Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective (3rd edn., Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000); Dorothy L. Hodgson, ed., Rethinking Pastoralism in Africa: Gender, Culture and the Myth of the Patriarchal Pastoralist (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000); Jane Peterson, Sexual Revolutions: Gender and Labor at the Dawn of Agriculture (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 2002).

On slavery, see Leslie A. Schwalm, A Hard Fight for We: Women's Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina ( Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1997); Claire Robertson and Martin A. Klein, eds., Women and Slavery in Africa (2nd edn., Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann; 1997); Mieko Nishida, Slavery and Identity: Ethnicity, Gender, and Race in Salvador, Brazil, 1808-1888 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,. 2003); Stephanie M. H. Camp, Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and' Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (Chapel Hill: University South Carolina Press, 2004); Jennifer Morgan, Laboring Wome Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: Universit of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Pamela Scully and Diana Paton, eds., Gende and Slave Emancipation in the Atlantic World (Durham, NC: Duk University Press, 2005).

As with English on available f, Barbara I (Blooming Scott, W01 David Her (New York Work and Mancheste and Preim Deborah V Press, 199: .1700 to th Rosalyn Ba Document, 1999); Shat Split Drean tics of the l lyzed in Phi Colonial Ti Mary Davi Movement, Kessler-Har in Europe, Press, 1995 Factory We Press, 1996 Making of Press, 1996: Unionism (I

·· Gendering 1 • Issues sur:

• East Asia, p Sisters and

' (Stanford, C :Work in R · (Cambridge: and Gender: f)f California in Motion: 1 Modern Chi !lee E. Patrici

, the feminist s particularly ngender and e Hartmann, uds a More 'he Family as Example of led Vision of o: University ons of these Perspectives "1:urray, The o Capitalism _ ose, Gender >ress, 1996); sed Work in :: Columbia ': What Men niversity of ics of Class

D. Spector, kota Villege Brettel and (3rd edn.,

,dgson, ed., fyth of the te Peterson, ere (Walnut

: Women's :hampaign: 1 A. Klein, '.einemann, ndRacein sity Press, 1omen and iversity of

Women: University s., Gender ~C: Duke

Economic Life 7 9

with so many of the issues in this book, the scholarship available in ish on women's work in Europe and the United States outw-€ighs that a,ble for the rest of the world. Some general overviews of Europe include 'ara Hanawalt, ed., Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe oinington: Indiana University Press, 1982);Louise A. Tilly and Joan W.

tt, Women, Work and Family (2nd edn., New York: Methuen, 1987); vid Herlihy, Opera Muliebria: Women and Work in Medieval Europe w York: McGraw Hill, 1990); Pat Hudson and W.R. Lee, eds., Women's rk and the Family Economy in Historical Per~pective (Manchester: nchester University Press, 1990); Daryl Hafter, ed., European Women

Preindustrial Craft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995); borah Valenze, The First Industrial Woman (New York: Oxford University ss, 1995); Deborah Simonton, A History of European Women's Work:

700 to the Present (London: Routledge, 1998). On the Unites States, see osalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon, eds., America's Working Women: A ocumentary History, 1600 to the Present (2nd edn., New York: Norton, 99); Sharlene Hesse-Biber and Gregg Carter, Working Women in America:

1/it Dreams (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). The gender poli- s of the labor movement in Europe and the United States have been ana- zed in Philip S. Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement: From olonial Times to the Eve of World War I (New York: Free Press, 1979); ary Davis, Comrade or Brother: A History of the British Labour ovement, 1789-1951 (London: Pluto Press, 1993); Ulla Wikander, Alice

_cssler-Harris, and Jane Lewis, eds., Protecting Women: Labor Legislation fl Europe, the United States and Australia (Urbana: University of Illinois >ress, 1995); Kathleen Canning, Languages of Labor and Gender: Female Factory Work in Germany, 1850-1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996); Anna Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the

'Making of the British Working Class (Berkeley: University of California ;l'ress, 1996); Ileen A. De Vault, United Apart: Gender and the Rise of Craft 'Unionism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press; 2004 ); Alice Kessler-Harris, Gendering Labor History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007).

Issues surrounding gender and work have also been studied extensively in Hast Asia, particularly in the modern period. For China, see Emily Honig, Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919-1949 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986); Tamara Jacke, Women's Work in Rural China: Change and Continuity in an Era of Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Francesca Bray, Technologies

•· 1md Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Bryna Goodman and Wendy Larson, eds., Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial and Modern China (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). For Japan,

· ~ec E. Patricia Tsurumi, Factory Girls: Women in the Thread Mills of Meiji

80 Economic Life

Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990); Janefl-Iunter, ed., Japanese Women Working (London: Routledge, 1993); Mary C. Brinton, Women and the Economic Miracle: Gender and Work in Postwar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Hitomi Tonomura, Anne Walthall, and Wakita Haruko, eds.,,Women and Class in Japanese History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998). For Korea, see Seung- Kyung Kim, Class Struggle or Family Struggle? The Lives of Women Factory Workers in South Korea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

On South and Southeast Asia, see Ursula Sharma, Women, Work, and Property in North-West India (London: Tavistock, 1986); Aihwa Ong, Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987); E. U. Eviota, The Political Economy of Gender: Women and the Sexual Division of Labor in the Philippines (London: Zed Books, 1992); Diane L. Wolf, Factory Daughters: Gender, Household Dynamics, and Rural Industrialization in Java (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Samita Sen, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India: The Bengal Jute Industry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

For Latin America, see: Florence E. Babb, Between Field and Cooking Pot: The Political Economy of Marketwomen in Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989); Joel Wolfe, Working Women, Working Men: Sifo Paulo and the Rise of Brazil's Industrial Working Class, 1900-1955 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993); Ann Zulawski, They Eat from Their Labor: Work and Social Change in Colonial Bolivia (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 1995); Daniel James and John D. French, eds., The Gendered Worlds of Latin American Women Workers: From Household and Factory to the Union Hall and Ballot Box (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997); Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, Dulcinea in the Factory: Myths, Morals, Men, and Women in Columbia's Industrial Experiment, 1905-1960 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000); Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, Labors Appropriate to Their Sex: Gender, Labor, and Politics in Urban Chile, 1900-1930 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001); Heidi Tinsman, Partners in Conflict: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Labor in the Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1950-1973 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002); Jane E. Mangan, Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Urban Economy in Colonial Potosi (Durham, NC: Duke University, 2005); Dana Frank, Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America ( Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2005); Elizabeth Dore, Myths of Modernity: Peonage and Patriarchy in Nicaragua (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).

For Africa, see Edna Bay, ed., Women and Work in Africa (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982); Jane L. Parpart and Sharon Stichter, eds., Patriarchy and Class: African Women in the Home and the Workforce (Boulder, CO:

Westview I and Devel University Bowl: A So Arbor: Uni (1991) on Threads Oi (Bloomingt Courtyards Westview I and Social 2003); Geo Status, Ge Eighteenth Kyomuhen Domestic,

There ha work, but property o- Women an, of Stratific Press, 197-'i Developin5 Hina Agan Asia (Caml .Womenan1 Jill Liddin!

.. Pandora, 1 · :1949 (StanJ l\Cultureo

>;n Mexico, ],;n urence, J {,Money, 17( .;ttrancis, 20 · Manyhii

1\equently c ·,

I

met Hunter, ed, [ary C. Brinton

Postwar Jap11 onomura, Ann ipanese Hist< 11 ,rea, see Set11114, Women Fact< >r'.)! Press, 1997). · :en, Work, a11d 1; Aihwa Onf{1 ien in Malaysitl J. Eviota, 7/,IJ on of Labor i11 Wolf, Factory ,triali:{.ation i ;, . 1 Sen, Wo11t<'II V (Cambridgt'I

and Cooki,1,t[ University of

'!n: Sao Paulo. 55 (Durham, t from Theil' h: Pittsburgh h, eds., Th11 i Household

NC: Duktl the Factory: Experiment, abeth Quay: id Politics in ress, 2001): xuality, and NC: Duke

r, Ethnicity, University,

ma Unions lbeth Dore, rham, NC:

ulder, CO: Patriarchy ulder, CO:

Economic Life 8 I

· w Press, 1988); Jane L. Parpart and Gloria A. Nikoi, eds., Women velopment in Africa: Comparative Perspectives (Lanham, MD:

sity Press of America, 1989); Claire Robertson~ Sharing the Same 'A Socioeconomic History of Women and Class in Accra, Ghana (Ann ·, University of Michigan Press, 1990); special issue of Signs, 16:4 ) on "Women, Family, State, and Economy in Africa"; Iris Berger, ds of Solidarity: Women in South African Industry, 1900-1980

ington: Indiana University Press, 1992); Kathleen Sheldon, ed., tyards, Markets, City Streets: Urban Women in Africa (Boulder, CO: view Press, 1996); Lisa Lindsay, Working with Gender: Wage Labor ocial Change in Southwestern Nigeria (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, ); George E. Brooks, Eurafricans in Western Africa: Commerce, Social s, Gender, and Religious Observance from the Sixteenth to the teenth Century (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003); Grace Bantebya- inuhendo and Marjorie Keniston McIntosh, Women, Work and nestic Virtue in Uganda, 1900-2003 (Oxford: James Currey, 2006). here has been far less research on aspects of economic life other than

tk, but there are beginning to be a few studies of how such issues as perty ownership and credit intersect with gender. See Vanessa Maher,

mien and Property in Morocco: Their Changing Relation to the Process Stratification in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University

A,s, 1974); William C. Jordan, Women and Credit in Pre-industrial and 1eloping Societies (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993 ); a Agarwal, A Field of One's Own: Gender and Land Rights in South

ia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Amy Louise Erickson, omen and Property in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1995); I Liddington, Female Fortune: Land, Gender and Authority (London: ndora, 1996); Kathryn Bernhardt, Women and Property in China, 960- 49 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, i999);MarieEileenFrancois, Culture of Everyday Credit: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking, and Governance Mexico City, 1750-1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2006); Anne

,lwrence, Josephine Maltby, and Janette Rutterford, eds., Women and their foney, 1700-1950: Essays on Women and Finance (New York: Taylor and f,rncis, 2008).

/ Many historians have recently turned their attention to consumption, and \frequently offer gendered analyses. See Carole Shammas, The Pre-industrial Consumer in England and America (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); John lln:wer and Roy Porter, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods ;(London: Routledge, 1993); Timothy Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: ·Consumption, Commodification, and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996); Victoria de Grazia, ed., The 8i'x of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective (Berkeley:

'University of California Press, 1996); Susan B. Hanley, Everyday Things in

' I I j

I I

8 2 Economic Life

Premodern Japan: The Hidden Legacy of Material Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Suzanne Brenner, The Domestication of Desire: Women, Wealth, and Modernity in Java (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 1998); Marcia Pointon, Str_ategies for Showing: Women, Possession,; and Representation in English Visual Culture 1665-1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Roger Horowitz and Arwen Mohun, eds., His and Hers: Gender, - Consumption and Technology (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998); Relli Shechter, ed., Transitions in Domestic Consumption and Family Life in the Modern Middle East: Houses in Motion (New York: Palgrave, 2003); Jennifer M. Jones, Sexing la Mode: Gender, Fashion and Commercial Culture in Old Regime France (New York: Berg, 2004).

Much of the scholarship on gender in the post-World War II economy has focused on issues surrounding women and development; for an extensive bibliography, see Parvin Ghorayshi, Women and Work in Developing Countries: An Annotated Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994). Several good general studies and collections of articles are Joan Smith and Immanuel Wallerstein, Creating and Transforming Households in the World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge Pniversity Press, 1992); Janet Momsen and Vivian Kinnaird, eds., Gender and Development in Africa, Asia, and Latin America (London: Routledge, 1993); Nahid Aslanbeigui et al., eds., Women in the Age of Economic Transformation: Gender Impact of Reforms in Post-Socialist and Developing Countries (London: Routledge, 1994 ); Gloria T. Emeagwali, ed., Women P aythe Price: Structural Adjustment in Africa and the Caribbean (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1994); Noeleen Heyzer et al., eds., The Trade in Domestic Workers: Causes, Mechanisms and Consequences of International Migration (London: Zed Books, 1994); special issue of Journal of Women's History, 11:4 (2000), "Marginalizing Economies: Work, Poverty, and Policy"; Esther Ngan-ling Chow, ed., Transforming Gender and Development in East Asia (New York: Routledge, 2002); Maxine Molyneux and Shahra Razavi, eds., Liberalism and Its Discontents: Gender Justice, Development, and Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); MarianneH. Marchand and Jane L. Parpart, eds., Feminism!Postmodernism/Development (New York: Routledge, 2003 ); Tine Davids and Francien Van Driel, eds., The Gender Question in Globalization: Changing Perspectives and Practices (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005). Another key question has been gendered patterns of migra- tion. See Grace Chang, Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000); Pamela Sharpe, ed., Women, Gender, and Labour Migration: Historical and Global Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2001).

There is a much longer list of selected readings, along with links to orig- inal sources, on the website associated with this book: www.wiley.com/go/ wiesnerhanks.

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