Introduction

Throughout history and across cultures, women have always worked, and their work has been essential in providing food, clothing, and shelter for their families. That work has taken many forms, from gathering wild food to churning butter, from selling handicrafts in the marketplace to working in a textile factory, from assisting executives to caring for the sick, from selling real estate to designing web pages and computer software. But women’s work was not always work for a wage. In fact, at the beginning of the twentieth century, waged work was viewed as an essential part of men’s, but not women’s, identities.