ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that men and women are finding that the restrictive burdens imposed by the traditional separation of spheres are no longer acceptable and the enslavement of a chief earner to a life time of wage labour is collapsing. The development of large-scale factory production enslaved men to regular, all-encompassing wage labour. Part of the reason for the quiescence of those workers in low-paid part-time jobs with poor conditions of employment is that they may see their rewards in terms of the total household income. The consumer may now appear to experience more power than the producer in a context where employment is becoming increasingly insecure, demanding and stressful. Those industries, such as textiles or potteries, where women dominated in employment did not become the overwhelming determinant of identity as other industries did for men.
