Husbandry to Housewifery: Women, Economic Change and Housework in Ireland, 1890-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)
This book examines the lives of Irish women between 1890 and 1914, tracing the shift of their labour out of the fields and into the home. She shows how, in this period, their position within the employment market deteriorated: married women came to be increasingly dependent on their husbands’ earnings, while economic opportunities for unmarried and widowed women collapsed. More and more women devoted all their productive enterprise to performing housework. She analyses the crucial elements in this change: the coincidence of sectoral shifts in the employment market, increasingly investment in the rural economy, and the growth of a labour-intensive household sector. Controversially, she argues that Irish women welcomed their altered role, finding housework preferable to many of the other options available to them.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Women, Economic Change, and Housework in Ireland, 1890-1914
Part One: Paid Workers
1. Paid employment
2. Rural service
3. Dairymaids
4. Home Industries
Part Two: Subsistence Entrepreneurs
5. Household agriculture
6. Poultry-rearing
Part Three: Houseworkers
7. From the beginning: housework
8. Education for the home
Conclusion: Housework and the well-Being of Women in Ireland, 1890-1914