ABSTRACT
Knowledge about women’s work is still scarce and incomplete, despite much study. Women’s participation in farm work varied, while the social and institutional environment may have been more or less conducive both to the employment of women and to reporting it. Recording of women’s participation in the labour force improved, then, only as structural societal changes occurred and salaried work became increasingly prevalent. In the first, the notion of specific “women’s work” prevailed. The most salient feature of the second was the greater visibility of wage-earning women, both industrial workers and white-collar employees. “Women’s work,” in the sense of the tasks done in traditional cultures or tasks traditionally assigned to women, first drew the attention of women historians. Early historical writings on women’s work, irrespective of any feminist leanings, took great interest in connections between work and women’s bodies. The world of office work, a far cry from shop-keeping, seemed to have more to offer women with an elementary education.
