ABSTRACT
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. 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. 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. 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. This chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
