Working for Women?

Gendered Work and Welfare Policies in Twentieth-Century Britain

Celia Briar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000025804
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1997 Working for Women? examines the ways in which women's patterns of paid and unpaid work have been mediated by the policies of governments throughout the 20th century. It looks at the state in defining what is women's work and men's work, and at equal pay and opportunities policies. This book will appeal to academics of sociology, gender and women's studies.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Social and Economic Policies: Working for Women?

Why do women work so hard and yet remain so much poorer than men? And why, at the end of the twentieth century, have the interventions of governments still not changed this basic fact? This book examines the ways in which women’s patterns of paid and unpaid work have been mediated by past and present social and economic policies, and whether these might conceivably change in the future. As the title, Working for Women?, implies, it is questionable whether most twentieth-century British governments have improved the position of working women relative to working men. Indeed, Working for Women? highlights a series of processes and strategies through which politicians of all major political parties (even when claiming to promote equality) have subverted feminist demands for improved economic rewards for women in paid employment and unpaid work. The evidence suggests that despite some feminist victories, patriarchal forces have combined to dominate government policy-making throughout the century.

The main interests influencing government policies in twentieth-century Britain have been those of employers and, to a considerable but lesser extent, those of working men. Although employers and trade unions are normally characterized as having conflicting aspirations, there is a good deal of evidence in this book and elsewhere of collusion between them about the position of working women. Many of the important policy agreements referred to in this book have been ‘tripartite’: that is, they have been made between government, employers and trade unions, but have usually not included women’s organizations. Most often, although not always, these arrangements have been detrimental to working women’s interests. It is important to question why this alliance has existed, and whether this is inevitably always going to be so.

However, the book also argues that different alliances could be formed at the level of the State, which would improve the material position of all low-income groups. This is important, because State policies have greater potential to improve the economic situation of women and other marginalized groups than the unrestricted market. The book therefore ends by exploring how the patriarchal welfare State might become a ‘woman friendly’ State, which new principles could inform policy-making and which policies could work for women.

The Scope of the Book

There is now a considerable body of feminist writing which has documented women’s varied experiences in paid and unpaid work, past and present (see, for example, Roberts, 1984, 1995; Braybon and Summerfield, 1987). Many precise forms of discrimination against women, in various kinds of workplaces, have also been described in detail.¹ However, most writers have devoted little attention to the effects of the State’s social policies on working women.² Working for Women?, by contrast, concentrates mainly on the policies of the State, which have profoundly influenced women’s pay, conditions and experience in paid and unpaid work. Working for Women? takes an overview of government policies affecting women’s relative economic position in Britain between 1905 and 1995. It traces shifts and continuities through periods of boom and slump and two world wars. Other useful feminist historical works which are referred to in this text have dealt with social policies affecting working women in shorter timeframes and hence in greater detail.³ A long timeframe, as in this book, is also useful, however, as it allows patterns in policy-making to emerge more clearly.

By contrast, mainstream social policy texts have on the whole tended to devote very little attention to employment policies, and especially to their impact on working women. Some still omit to mention women at all.⁴ Feminist social policy writers have, not surprisingly, made the largest contribution to an understanding of the effects of social policies upon working women.⁵ There is also a small but growing international feminist literature on women and economic policy which concentrates firmly on working women and the state.⁶ Even social and economic policy texts which look at the relationship between working women and the State tend to look at recent history, rather than at longer historical patterns. Finally, Working for Women? is unusual in proposing alternatives. The problem of working women’s poverty seems so large and yet so institutionalized that it appears difficult to find any solution which would be effective for most working women but would still be considered ‘reasonable’ by employers and most politicians.⁷ Yet if solutions are not found, most women will remain poor. In a number of respects, therefore, Working for Women? fills a gap in the existing literature.

Working for Women? is, nevertheless, not intended to be a comprehensive account of social and economic policies affecting women’s material wellbeing. To do so would have taken several volumes. For example, it does not deal in detail with taxation policies or retirement pensions. More attention is given to policies affecting women’s paid employment than unpaid work. Policies affecting working-class women receive somewhat more attention than those affecting middle-class women. However, the book does focus on patterns of recruitment of women into paid work and demobilization out of paid employment, the unequal treatment of unemployed women, equal pay and opportunities policies, government-sponsored training and the principles governing the nature and extent of State child care; and, in a later chapter, it also examines the gendered impact of the deregulation of the labour market. It should hopefully be useful to students of women’s studies, social policy, economics and history as well as to the interested general reader.

Women, Paid Employment, Unpaid Work and Government Policy

Work consists of all activities which people carry out in order to live (Lewenhak, 1988, p. 15). In pre-industrial times most work was unwaged (Pahl, 1992, p. 132). By contrast, the majority of people in modern societies do not have access to an independent livelihood, for example from the land. Most are dependent on a wage from paid employment (which has come to be treated by policy-makers as if it was the only form of work), on a State benefit or on another person. However, an equally striking feature of the organization of work is the way it is divided by gender. There have been ‘men’s jobs’ and ‘women’s jobs’ since before industrialization, although many occupations that were formerly female-dominated have been taken over by men and vice versa. The enduring difference between ‘men’s work’ and ‘women’s work’ is that occupations that are seen as men’s at any particular time are usually valued more highly (Bradley, 1989).

Government accounting systems in countries such as Britain do not count unpaid work, most of which is performed by women (Waring, 1988); and women working outside the paid workforce are still officially described as ‘economically inactive’ (Employment Gazette, 1995). Even some feminist writers describe women who are out of paid employment as ‘not working’ (Dex, Walters and Alden, 1993). Housework, though essential, is hidden, private, isolated, trivialized and unpaid: it exists outside what is still often considered to be the world of production, and it is normally by the goodwill of a wage-earner that the housewife receives all or part of her economic support. By contrast, paid employment, though often producing inessential or even harmful items, and frequently debilitating and boring for the employee, is dignified with the title of ‘work’, and waged workers have been regarded as ‘independent’, even though they are in fact dependent on a wage.

In modern economic systems, money is the main measure of value. A large part of women’s work is unpaid and therefore unvalued. Work is also the means by which people create their social identity. If the work of a group of people is unvalued or undervalued, those people are also deprived of status and power. By describing a woman with preschool children, who may be working 100 hours a week, as ‘economically inactive’, we are effectively making her, as well as her work, invisible. In this book I distinguish between paid employment and unpaid labour, but describe both as work. Virtually all women work.

How should we assess whether social and economic policies have benefited working women? The extent to which women’s share of direct income has increased between 1905 and 1995 and the proportion of women capable of supporting themselves and any dependents are the main criteria used in this book. Although women have largely obtained formal political equality during the twentieth century, and have entered paid work in larger numbers, economic independence and freedom from poverty have continued to elude women, especially wives and mothers (Lewis and Piachaud, 1992). This is a worldwide phenomenon: however, the extent of women’s economic dependency has been particularly striking in countries such as Britain, the United States and Australia, compared with nations such as Sweden (Hobson, 1990; Bryson, 1992). These differences are associated with significant divergences in social policy. Scandinavian social policy has been consistently characterized by stronger equal-pay legislation, more State nursery provision and more generous child benefits and paid parental leave than the English-speaking nations (Adams and Winston, 1980; Ruggie, 1984; Hernes, 1987, p. 15). Nonetheless, even the more ‘progressive’ welfare States remain gendered, in that their policies still reproduce income disparities between women and men, and caring is still done primarily unpaid in the home, mainly by women (Leira, 1993).

The employment and family policies of the State, particularly in the English-speaking world, tend to be implicit rather than overt. Normally the impression is given that most of the conditions in the paid workforce, including inequalities based on gender, ethnicity and class, are the result of agreements freely made between employers and employees. Nevertheless, governments in twentieth-century Britain have at times directly exercised enormous powers over working men and women and even over employers. During the Second World War women and men were conscripted and could be directed into the most dangerous types of paid work; and leaving such employment, or persistent absence, was an imprisonable offence. Even in peacetime, government social and economic policies have a major impact on the number and types of jobs available, over how different types of work are valued and over who has preferential access to the positions with the best pay and prospects within the paid workforce. Similarly, the equally hidden family policies of the State have had a huge impact on power relations within households and over who does the bulk of the unpaid work. The State’s role in maintaining inequalities at work has nevertheless been largely hidden, especially since the 1970s. Exposing the gendered social and economic policies of twentieth-century British governments is a central task of Working for Women? Equally, however, it is argued here that the State has enormous power which could potentially be used to bring about greater economic equality for women.

Working Women and the State in the Late-nineteenth Century

Much of the policy framework which is described in Working for Women? was already established by the late-nineteenth century. A series of government reports from the 1840s illustrated policy-makers’ concern that girls should learn to become good housewives rather than regular employees.⁸ In particular, inspectors of mines and factories judged girls and women according to their sexual conduct rather than their capacity for hard work (Walby, 1986, pp. 115–16). Wives’ economic dependence came to be seen by policy-makers as normal and desirable and the concept of the family wage was accepted, irrespective of whether workmen actually earned enough to support a family. Lower pay for women was legal and the general rule.

During the nineteenth century women’s opportunities for remunerative employment narrowed, as many traditional areas of ‘women’s work’ were moved to factory production and came to be performed by men. The main opportunity left open to women was domestic service (Schreiner, 1918; Pinchbeck, 1981; Walby, 1986, pp. 94–5). Women were excluded by working men from most trade unions and thus from a wide range of skilled occupations, thus keeping men’s wages higher than they would otherwise have been (Walby, 1986, p. 92 and Appendix 1). No State action was taken to prevent these restrictive practices against them, even though unions themselves were at times illegal. A series of pieces of ‘protective’ legislation from the 1840s onwards limited the hours of paid factory work of women and children and banned women from working underground in coal mines. It became more difficult for working-class women to obtain a living from paid employment. Opportunities for middle- and upper-class unmarried women to obtain a dignified livelihood through their own labour were also restricted.

There were exceptions, however. For example, during the early-nineteenth century, in cotton-weaving, because of the initial reluctance of hand-loom weavers to give up their independence and enter the factories, some employers took the opportunity to employ women and children instead of an exclusively male workforce, although males were still employed in the best paid and most senior positions. Working-class women in the Burnley/Nelson area retained their position in cotton-weaving until after the Second World War.

Although access to a livelihood from paid work was becoming more the exception than the rule, it was high on the agenda of feminists in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Campaign to Promote Women’s Employment was founded in 1859; and women became more active in trade unions: this included forming their own Women’s Protective and Provident League in 1874. By the first decade of the twentieth century feminists were making demands for women’s equal right to an independent livelihod through paid employment.⁹

Contents of Chapters 2–10

Chapters 2–7 examine a series of twentieth-century employment policies towards women. The focus of Chapter 2 is on government responses to feminist demands for women’s ‘right to work’ and for women’s unemployment to be treated as a serious issue during the decade before the outbreak of the First World War. Following a campaign by the Women’s Industrial Council, women were included in the 1905 Unemployed Workmen Act and some women were provided with work - although not on the same scale or under the same terms...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Women’s ‘Right to Work’ and the State, 1905–1914
• Chapter 3 Women as ‘Substitutes for Men’ in Recruitment Policy, 1914–1918
• Chapter 4 Women and Unemployment Policy between the Wars
• Chapter 5 Women, Recruitment and Demobilization Policy during the Second World War
• Chapter 6 Women’s ‘Dual Role’ and the Postwar Boom, 1945–1970
• Chapter 7 Equal Employment Opportunities, or Women as a Flexible Reserve Labour Force?
• Chapter 8 Twentieth-Century Work and Welfare Policies: Have They Worked for Women?
• Chapter 9 Can State Policies Work for Women? A Theoretical Discussion
• Chapter 10 What Could Work for Women? Policies and Strategies
• References
• Index