ABSTRACT
What connection existed between the gender divisions of paid employment experienced by the women I interviewed and the gender divisions of domestic labour in their own household? This question represents the starting point for this chapter. It is a question that may be explored at different levels of analysis and generality. At the most concrete, it is concerned with how working women coped with domestic labour and childcare while also engaging in paid employment. How did they manage the ‘dual roles’ of worker and wife in an epoch prior to the mass employment of married women and prior also to the mass availability of consumer durables, ‘labour-saving’ devices, and other commodities that were associated with the expansion of married women's employment in the post-war period? Did they do everything themselves, working ten or twelve hours a day for pay, then going home and doing all the the cooking, cleaning, and washing for their husband and children? Or were they accustomed to men helping at home and so view domestic labour as a relatively non-gendered activity?
