“Women’s Place” in the Labor Market

Abstract

The resurgence of the women's movement in the late 1960's has stimulated increasing interest in the economic status of women. This article draws on an existing research to summarize the trends in women's involvement in market work and in their employment status. With the development of the factory system in the textile mills of New England during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, women and children entered the manufacturing establishments to comprise the overwhelming majority of the country's first industrial work force. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the growing concentration of industry and the increased scale of business organization created a need for workers engaged in coordinating and integrating the activities of the expanded business network. The basic notion that work should be allocated on the basis of sex and therefore that some tasks are particularly suitable for women and others for men is thus deeply embedded in the tradition and custom. On the demand side, there is no reason to assume that employers as a group should be free from socially prevalent attitudes as to what constitutes appropriate female tasks and, indeed, the available studies seem to support this contention.