The University of Chicago Press

Familial Constraints on Women's Work Roles
Author(s): Elise Boulding

Source: Signs, Vol. 1, No. 3, Women and the Workplace: The Implications of Occupational
Segregation (Spring, 1976), pp. 95-117
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF
OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION
Familial Constraints on Women's

Work Roles
Elise Boulding
The nature of the familialconstraintson woman's role as worker in

everytype of human societyis perhaps best captured by the triplerole
concept of "breeder-feeder-producer."From the earliest and simplest
hunting and gathering folk to the most industrialized societyof the
twentiethcentury,the breedingof babies1and the feedingof humans of
all ages is almostexclusivelythe workof the woman,2above and beyond
other productive processes she is engaged in. In addition, the woman
participatesin certain producer roles, usually but not always differen-
tiated from male producer roles.
It should be clear that all three categories in the breeder-feeder-
producer triad are in fact producer roles, but I am distinguishingbe-
tween the firsttwo categories,which are assigned to women only, and
the third,which is divided between women and men. In a subsistence
society,the producer role existsprimarilyto create materialfordomestic
consumption. It is only when tradingbegins thatstickyquestions about
Some of the material in this article is taken fromThe Undersideof History:A Viewof
WomenthroughTime (Boulder, Colo.: WestviewPress, 1976, in press). I wish to thank my
associate, Dorothy Carson, for assistance in preparing this manuscript.
1. I include in the concept of breeding both the bearing of children and caring for
them until theyare self-sufficient.The biological aspect of childbearingis only one com-
ponent of breeding thus defined.
2. Men may prepare special feast foods, but in no societyis the preparationof food
for consumption in the home the regular daily work of men.
95

Boulding 96
the agents and measurementsof productionarise. Woman's production

is normallynoticed by statisticiansonly when it leaves the home. Man's
productionis more apt to be noticedwhetherit leaves the home or not.
At the simplest level the producer roles for women outside the
breeder-feedercomplex have to do with the gatheringor growingof
food, carryingwaterand fuel to the hearth,erectionof shelters,making
domestic utensilsand clothing,and the creation of ceremonial objects.
The triplerole tends to give women more hours of work in a day than
men, although this is not universallytrue. We will begin by examining
the workingday of women in differentkinds of societies.
WorkSettings
Different for Womenthrough
History
Huntingand GatheringSocieties
In huntingand gatheringsocietiesthe producer role of the male is

encompassed by huntingand the makingof tools associated withhunt-
ing. These activitiesconsume all of his working hours and generally
provide about 20 percent of the food of the band.3 Hunting has been
described as a high-risk,low-yieldactivity,in contrastto food gathering
as a low-risk,high-yieldactivity.4
Women seem to be able to provide the
other 80 percentof the band's food throughgatheringactivitiesand still
carry out the breeder-feederroles, the procuring of water and fuel,
building of shelters,makingof utensils,etc. They also catch small game
close to the campsite with their bare hands, but do not run great dis-
tances after game-an impracticalproposition with small children to
care for.It is sometimessaid thatthe huntingand gatheringwayof lifeis
the only leisure society we know of. Reports from many of the 250
huntingand gatheringbands extanttodayindicatethatwomen and men
workshorterhours than in anyothertypeof societyand have more time
for ceremonies and celebrations.5
Due to the constraintsof the nomadic life,thereis a strictlimitation
on familysize. Hunting and gatheringbands manage zero population
growththrougha combinationof abortion,infanticide,and infantmor-
tality.In thisleisure societythere are fewsex-differentiated reward sys-
tems. Women and men have differentceremonial roles but participate
equally in ceremonials and band decision making, including decisions
about marriages. There is no accumulation of resources to serve as a
power base for individuals of either sex, and monogamy is the rule.
Although it is said that twentyhours of work per person per week may
meet all maintenance needs, it is not clear whetherthe anthropologist
3. Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore, eds., Man theHunter(Chicago: Aldine Publishing
Co., 1968).
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

Familial Constraints 97
observershave actuallyclocked the fullworkingtimeof women around

the campfireafterthe food has been broughtthere.There is probablya
component of "invisible"work which needs to be more accuratelyre-
corded before thisway of lifedisappears. It is also difficultto clock time
spent in care of small children. When are theybeing "cared for,"and
when is interactionwiththem pure recreationand enjoyment?When all
these considerationsare taken into account,the chances are thateven in
this most egalitarian of all types of human societies the women are
"working"longer hours than men.
The EarlyAgrovillages
Agricultureprobablyemerged out of discoveriesof stands of wild

grain at revisitedcampsites-stands thatrepresentedaccidental harvests
of the previousyear'sgatheringactivities.This was clearlywomen's work
and stillis whereversimple digging-sticktype of plantingin the slash-
and-burn cultivationpatternis found, notablyin Africa.In the agrovil-
lage existence that developed when people began settlingdown near
good supplies of wild grain, and plantingtheir own crops besides, the
work load began to shiftmore heavily toward women. Men in these
agrovillageswere stillcontributingtheirshare of the food throughhunt-
ing. Because of game scarcityby 12,000 B.C., the contributionsof the
now sedentaryhunters,even withimprovedtools,were probablykept to
20 percent of the total food supply. Men would be gone for days at a
time in pursuitof game, and women's producer roles in the agrovillage
multiplied. The herding pattern for men, which was an offshootof
hunting,involved similarmovementpatterns,although it may have in-
creased the economic contributionof men to familysustenance. With
settlementcame buildings,courtyards,the makingand accumulationof
domestic objects and ceremonial materials.The followingoutline sum-
marizes women's daily activitiesin the agrovillagebased on myinterpre-
tation of archeological evidence in the Near East from 10,000 to 6000
B.C., plus more contemporaryanthropologicalevidence.
1. The hearth
a) Cooking
b) Feeding family
c) Care of small infants (carried out concurrently with all
other activitiesduring day and night)
d) Childbearing(one of primaryproductiveprocessesof women,
carried out concurrentlywith all other activitiesduring day
and night)
e) Cleaning and maintenanceof hearth
2. The courtyard
a) Production processes
(1) Food: processingof foods to be cooked (sometimescook-
ing and baking also done in courtyard,combining 1 and
2a)

Boulding 98
(2) Crafts:sewing,weaving,basketand potterymaking,stone-

ware and implement making, jewelry, production of
cosmetics
(3) Building activities:houses, cult centers,etc.
b) Social organization
(1) Council meetings
(2) Ritual and ceremony preparations
(3) Teaching of children
(4) Other village affairs
3. The fields
a) Gatheringfruitand nuts
b) Clearing fields(withhelp frommen)
c) Planting,cultivating,and harvestingfood
d) Caring for sheep and goats
e) Collecting fuel for hearth fires
f) Collecting material for building
g) Carryingwater to the courtyardand hearth
These firstagrovillageshad populationsof from100 to 200 people. If

the work load assigned to women seems improbablyheavy,compare it
withthe summaryof workloadsforwomen (table 1) based on surveysof
women engaged in subsistenceagriculturein Africatoday.6
I suggest that the point of transitionfromthese early agrovillages
(such as Eynan,Jarmo,Hacilar) to the largertradingtowns(likeJericho,
Beidha, Catal Huyuk) was the point at which the woman's economic
contributionstartedto "weigh"less thanthe man's,even thoughthesheer
quantityof productivelabor was greater. Initially,the egalitarianismof
the huntingand gatheringsocietymusthave carriedover intotheearliest
agrovillages.The sheer factof the continuingpresence of women and
long absences of men may have given rise to occasional examples of a
"rule of women" during this firstvillage life. Aberle suggeststhat mat-
rilinyarises in situationswhere thereare all-womenworkgroups,where
womencontrolthe residencebases, and wherethereis "a certainrange of
productivity and a certainrange of centralization-ranges narrowerthan
those of either patrilinealor bilateral systems."7
6. The data base for discussion on the interrelationsbetween the integrationof

women in development,their situation,and population factorsin Africa is the Regional
Seminar on the Integrationof Women in Development,withSpecial Referenceto Popula-
tion Factors,held by the Economic CommissionforAfricaof the United Nations Economic
and Social Council in Addis Ababa, May 1947, mimeographed report(New York: United
Nations, 1974).
7. David F. Aberle, "MatrilinealDescent in Cross-culturalPerspective,"in Matrilineal
Kitnship,ed. David M. Schneider and Kathleen Gough (Berkeley: Universityof California
Press, 1974), pp. 655-730. I agree with him that matrilinyis not a general evolutionary
stage but only arises under certain conditions. Not all agrovillage development would
followthe patternI am suggesting.

Table 1
Participationby Women in the Traditional Rural

and Modernizing Economy in Africa
Unit of
Responsibility Participation*
A. Production/supply/distribution:
1. Food production ............................................ 0.70
2. Domestic food storage ....................................... 0.50
3. Food processing ............................................. 1.00
4. Animal husbandry........................................... 0.50
5. Marketing .................................................. 0.60
6. B rewing .................................................... 0.90
7. Water supply ............................................... 0.90
8. Fuel supply ................................................. 0.80
B. Household/community:
1. Household:
a) Bearing, rearing,initialeducation of children ............... 1.00
b) Cooking for husband, children,elders ...................... 1.00
c) Cleaning, washing,etc..................................... 1.00
d) Housebuilding ........................................... 0.30
e) House repair ............................................ 0.50
2. Community:
Self-help projects ......... ............................. .... 0.70
SOURCE.-Mineographed report of tie Regional Seminar on the Integration of Women in De\elopinent (n.
6 aboxe). Data base from"The Changing and ContemporaryRole of Women in AfricanDevelopinent (1974); "Country
Reportson Vocational and Technical Training tor Girlsand Women" (1972-74); studies,missionreports,discussions,all
axailable fron the United Nations. As noted in the text,unitsot participationshould be determinedfist lorlaleas within
lto Africa.
countries,then on the national lexel, then
*Estimatesare gixen in termsot the unitof participationforwomen's labor,i.e., women as a percentageof the total
population in a gisen activity.
The TradingTowns
Women's range of productivityincreasinglynarrowed as men, dur-
ing their huntingjourneys, began locating sources of flintand other
materialsvalued for tools and for ceremonials. This immediatelygave
them a competitive advantage over stay-at-homewomen. The first
specializationbetweenvillages,accordingto the archaeologicalevidence,
appears when hunters(some fromagrovillages,some of them probably
stillnomadic) begin supplyingothervillageswithflintand receivingcraft
and food products in return.Women are not able to work the trading
networks to the extent the men are, because they are too busy with
productionforfamilyconsumption.Some of thecraftproductsofwomen
enterthetradingnetworks,butbyand large thediversityof women'stasks
preventsspecialization.Thus, when theirproducts do enter the market
theyare marginal,and probablydo not command "prices" comparable
withthose of the male specialistsin the new stone and bone shops of the
later trading towns.

Boulding 100
The Rise of UrbanCivilization
By the timemajor urban centersin Sumer and Egyptarose, a system

of social stratificationhad developed that complicates the picture. In
Sumerian Erech, 4000 B.C., therewere fewdistinctionsbetweenrichand
poor. There were "street scribes" available to any woman or man for
business purposes, and therewere no great differencesin housing style
and size. By 2500 B.C., however,nomadic incursions,wars, and giftsof
land and bootyfromkingsto theirsupportershad created an aristocracy
based in the palace, the temple,and thelanded estates.On thenew urban
scene there were large palace-templecomplexes, rich landholders,and
elaborate tables of law. From there a certain class of women-the
aristocracy-became visibleand would remainvisibleuntilthe industrial
revolution.Women in the scribaland small-merchantclass, on the con-
trary,became invisible,working-classwomen somewhat less so. Thus,
while the emergence of early trading towns tipped the scales against
recognitionof the productiverole of the mass of women,the firsturban
civilizationsfinishedthe process.
of Women'sWork
The Role ofLaw in Redefinition
The emergence of law containsthe emergenceof the concept of the
male-headed household and of the administrationof propertyby the
male. The earlier, more fluid,clan rightsto land and propertythat left
resources available to the women and men who were prepared to work
withthemwere transformedintorigidlyspelled out male rights.This was
no simpleprocess; as late as 1751 B.C. the Code of Hammurabi contained
sixty-eightsections on familyand women, fiftyon land and territory
(dealing withclan rights),and seven on priestesses.While descent of the
elites was usually recorded in governmentrecords through the male, a
woman was sometimesnamed and descent traced throughher. Women
sometimes also appear in land deeds as heads of households and as
donors and recipientsof ritualizedfood offerings.They are recorded as
doing long-distancetrading under theirown names. Ancient legal rec-
ords show that the women of the elite oftenfoughtsuccessfullyto keep
theirrightsto land under the new systemthatin principlerecorded land
in the name of males only. No studyhas been made of the percentageof
women holding land in their own name throughout history,but in
Europe fromA.D. 900 to 1200 it was sometimesas high as 18 percent.
When land administeredbywomenon behalfof childrenis included,the
figureswas as high as 25 percent.8The amount of attentiongiven to
women's rights,both in Egyptianand Sumerian law,9and the numerous
8. David Herlihy,"Land, Family,and Women in Continental Europe, 701-1200,"
Traditio18 (1962): 89-120.
9. SteffanWenig, Womenin EgyptianArt(New York: McGraw-HillBook Co., 1970);
Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians:TheirHistory,
Culture,and Character(Chicago: Uni-
versityof Chicago Press, 1963).

referencesin contemporarydocumentsto courtbattlesfoughtbywomen

in Greece and Rome, indicatesthatdeclaring the male the legal head of
the household and building legal and administrativepractices around
him never fullycovered the real-lifeeconomic and social exigencieswith
which women and men had to deal. What the male head of household
device did do, however, was to make second-classcitizensof the great
mass of middle- and working-classwomen, who had no independent
power base as the women of the elitedid. By definingthemas subsidiary
household members,it became possible to avoid the issue of equal work
forequal pay. This mainlyaffectedworking-classwomen,sincethescribal
and small-merchant class-the urban bourgeoisie of the ancient
civilizations-were as apt to promote women as display objects as their
brothers centuries later. Middle-class urbanites in the Mediterranean
civilizationsenclosed theirwomen fromthe beginning.Europe, ancient
and modern, followed suit.
There were twoclasses of "workingwomen,"then,fromabout 2000
B.C. on: the wealthyoverseas merchantsand the estate and temple ad-
ministratorson the one hand, and, on the other, the poor women who
worked in textileworkshops,ran the corner bakery and brewery,and
provided the upper classes with much the same range of domestic,
health,and beauty servicesthatworkingwomen do today.The occupa-
tional roles for women in the Age of Pericles can be classifiedin the
followingway.10
1. Occupations for women slaves (there were an estimated90,000

women slaves in Athens in the fourthcenturyaccording to Wal-
lon's Histoired'esclavage)
a) Food processing: threshinggrain, grindingflour
b) Agriculturalwork in the fields
c) Mining: gold and silvermining; separatingmetal fromslag,
washing metal; transportingore from underground corri-
dors of mines to the surface
d) Textile workers: all operations connected with carding,
spinning, and weaving carried on by women in work-
shops-no indication whether these were state owned or
privatelyowned. Weaving also carried on as cottage industry
in privatehomes
e) Varietyof craftproductioncarried on as cottage industryin
privatehomes
f) Domestic service
2. Occupations open to free women
a) Agriculture,unspecifiedexcept for "fieldwork"
b) Textile work as above
c) Trade: selling of vegetables,processed foods, baked goods,
10. This listingrepresents a synthesisof informationabout Greek women from a

great varietyof sources, including material summarized in Evelyne Sullerot,Histoireet
(Paris: Societe Nouvelle des Editions Gonthier,1968).
sociologiedu travailfeminin

Boulding 102
other home-manufacturedproducts, unspecified. Selling of

cloth,garments,headdresses
d) Innkeeping
e) Being a courtesan (combination intellectual, artist, and
entertainer)
f) Running schools for courtesans
g) Midwifery,nursing
h) Music
i) Dancing
j) Vase painting
3. Occupations specificallyforbiddento women
a) Medicine (there are records of illegal practice and punish-
ment of women practitioners)
4. Occupations possible but not encouraged
a) Scribe; schools for women are rare (ex. Sappho) but if a
woman could writeshe was not forbiddento exerciseher skill.
Poor workingwomen had severaldisadvantagescompared withmen
fromthebeginning.They had to competewithslave labor forone thing.11
Most of the textileworkshops in Egypt and Greece were operated by
female slave labor, and many serviceswere rendered by slave women in
the Mediterranean cities. Since slaves were only given subsistence,a
double forceoperated to givefreewomen pittancewages: (1) theavailabil-
ityof slave labor and (2) the fictionof male head of household. The
woman supposedlyhad someone to supporther,and so herwages needed
only be supplemental.
on theWomanWorker
Constraints
Characteristic
In the foregoinganalysis,I have tracedthe worksettingsforwomen
in hunting and gathering societies,the early agrovillages,the trading
towns,and in the firsturban civilizations.From the firsturbanismuntil
the industrialrevolution,it is my view that there were no substantial
differencesin the worksituationforwomen. The followingdiscussionof
the social, legal, and familialconstraintson women will apply primarily
but not exclusivelyto the Westernworld fromGreek and Roman times
onward.
The Male Head ofHouseholdFiction

One of the mostenduringconstraintsis the male head of household
concept. I have labeled the terma fiction,for,while a careful studystill
needs to be done, it appears thatin any setting-urban or rural-in any
period of historyforwhichdata is available, one fifthto one-halfof the
11. Free men had so manyother advantages in ancient societiesthatthe existenceof

male slaves did not affecttheir situation to the extent that female slaves affectedthe
situationof freewomen (see William L. Westermann,The Slave Systems ofGreekand Roman
Antiquity[Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society,1955]).

heads of households were women. Many of these women were rearing

children without male partners because of widowhood, desertion, di-
vorce, or because they were plural wives infrequentlyvisited by the
husband and with full responsibilityfor the care and feeding of their
children.l2 Some were never-marriedwomen who had been driven by
povertyto sell sexual services and who raised children with minimal
resources.Or theywere never-marriedwomen who had chosen an inde-
pendent wayof lifeas entertainers,intellectuals,or merchants(variously
labeled hetaira, courtesans, and prostitutes);they mightor might not
have chosen to raise childrenof theirown. Most of these women,except
for the wealthyand the independent entrepreneurs,had to struggleto
make ends meet. They had to accept the low wages establishedthrough
the fictionof male support and the realityof the competitionof slave
labor.
What familyarrangementsdid women heads of household make for
the care of their children while they were at work? Women in great
povertyhad to leave children withoutcare to run the streetsor locked
themin airlessrooms. Probablythe institutionof the neighborwho takes
in children fora few pennies is as ancientas the urban workingwoman.
For the mostpart,however,whatcare such childrenreceivedthroughout
the Christian Era came from women who chose celibacy rather than
motherhood, the women of the religious orders. They ran the soup
kitchens,the orphanages, and the schools forthe verypoor. When many
of theearlierreligiousordersdeclined and beforethenineteenth-century
growthin religiousserviceordersbegan, the plightofchildrenof the poor
became desperate. In 1770 thousands of children of Parisian working
mothers were rounded up from the streetsby the "authorities"to be
deported as labor for overseas settlements.l3Only the mass exodus of
theirmothersfromtheirplaces of workstopped thisroundup. Indeed, it
was around the problemsof these"ragged children,"as the Britishcalled
them, that the nineteenth-centuryphilanthropic and social service
movementsdeveloped. For the women heads of household who were the
mothersof these children, however,there was never much more than
pious exhortationto "stop sinning."They were fallenwomen in the eyes
of the middle and upper class, not workingwomen withfamilyrespon-
sibilities.That notion continues even today.
FamilialDivisionofLabor
Rural areas.-The divisionof labor betweenwomen and men in rural
areas throughoutthe worldhas varied depending on the scale of agricul-
12. A common situationin parts of Africatoday (see Ester Boserup, Woman'sRole in
EconomicDevelopment[London: George Allen & Unwin, 1970]; out of print,but reissued as
a paperback [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1974]).
13. George Rude, The Crowdin History,1730-1848 (New York: John Wiley & Sons,
1964).

Boulding 104
ture. Withcash cropping and plantationagriculturecomes the develop-

ment of labor-savingmachineryand the dominance of the male.l4 In
developing countries,the developmentof large-scaleagricultureusually
puts heavier work loads on women in termsof workinghours because
theyare required to weed and carrywaterto thecash-cropfieldswhilestill
growingfood in theirown plots to feed the family.Since the breeding-
feedingactivitiesare not counted as productivelabor,the wages of Third
World women agriculturalistsare often of some indeterminateminus
quantity.That is, theysubsidize,even more than other workingwomen,
the men of theirhouseholds and of theircommunity.In a societywith
large-scaleurban migration,the women are usuallyleftbehind to do the
farming.Rarelydo theyshare the urban wages of male familymembers,
althoughthesewages maybe investedin buyingmore land forthewoman
to farm.
In Europe during the Middle Ages the situationof farm women
varied. There was the prosperous but hardworkingpeasant household
wherelengthof workinghourswas perhaps fairlyequally divided. On the
other hand, there were the widows who had an incredible work load
because they were compelled to render, unaided, feudal services that
were shared in husband-wifehouseholds.l5There was also the desperate
situationof laboringwomen withoutpartnerswho sometimesdied, with
their babies, of exhaustion and starvationin the very fields that were
yieldingunprecedented harvests.16
Wave and labordifferentialsin ruralareas.-With the decline of the
feudal estatesin thelaterMiddle Ages, the new phenomenon of detached
wage labor began in ruralareas. Here theoutlinesof women'ssubservient
economic situation as wage laborer became clear. The state tried to
establishcontrolover manpower movementsbut in effectcontrolledthe
movement of women. The 1563 Elizabethan Statute of Artifices,for
example stated: "By thisAct [the Statuteof Laborers] everywoman free
or bound, under 60, and not carryingon a trade or calling,provided she
had no land, and was not in domesticor other service,was liable to be
called upon to enter service eitherin the fieldsor otherwise,and if she
refused,she was imprisoneduntil she complied; whilstall girlswho for
twelveyearshad been broughtup to followthe plough, were not allowed
to enter any other calling, but were forced to continue workingin the
fields."17
14. See Boserup.

15. For an incredibleaccount of the work load under feudalism,see G. Duby, Rural
Economyand Country Lifein theMedievalWest,trans.C. Pasten (London: E. Arnold, 1968).
16. Julia O'Faolian and Laura Marines,eds., Notin God'sImage:A HistoryofWomenin
EuropefromtheGreeksto theNineteenth Century(New York: Harper & Row, 1973).
17. ArthurRackham Cleveland, WomanundertheEnglishLaw (London: Hurst, 1896),
p. 76.

Men continued to move to getjobs, but women withfamilyrespon-

sibilitiesfeltthe fullforceof thecompulsionto workin the fieldsand took
home pieceworkwhichtheycould do whilestillcaring forchildren.With
theunityof capital and labor gone, theonlylimitseton theexploitationof
the poorest class of laboring women was death by starvation.That grim
scenario became more fullydeveloped in the next century.
It is with the appearance of wage labor that the manifestationsof
wage differentials(which may in facthave existed all the time) became
visible.Because of theirimmobility womenhave no bargainingpowerand
so suffer wage discrimination everywhere. In 1422 the scholars of
Toulouse paid women grape pickershalf what theypaid the men, who
onlyhad to carrythe fullbasketsback to thecollege cellar. (The monksof
Paris did the same.)18Women constructionworkerswho worked side by
side withmen in buildingthe College of Toulouse were paid farless than
the men forthe same labor.19Not even the labor shortageresultingfrom
the Black Death improved women's wages; theyremained substantially
the same on the Continent for nearly 100 years.20The supposed labor
shortages from the Black Death did not help the laboring poor in En-
gland, either.21While thiscould be interpretedas reflectingwidespread
underemploymentin the previouscentury,one could also say thatlabor-
ers in that century had "shorter hours, better working conditions."
Fourteenth-century workershad to worklongerand harder forthe same
pay, especially women.
The opportunitiesfor the woman of the rural upper classes were
limitedonlybyher abilities;entrepreneurshipwas rewarded.Withplenty
of hands to help, the breeding-feedingrole posed no problem to her.
During the Middle Ages and as a resultof theabsence of men in crusades,
theremayhave been an increasein thenumberof women in landholding
and public roles,but thebasic pre-Crusade participationlevelwas already
high, as the Herlihy studyshows.22
Urbanareas.-It is difficultto constructa clear pictureof the situa-
tions of urban middle-classwomen. The enclosure concept that I have
emphasized is only part of the picture. In addition to the unknown
numberof women who had no significant activitiesbeyondsupervisionof
children and servants,there were women who acted as partnersin their
husbands' enterprises,including trading. It is hard to determine how
manyof thewomen who became knownas successfultradersin theirown
18. Sylvia L. Thrupp, Changesin MedievalSocietyEuropeNorthoftheAlps,1050-1500

(New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1964), pp. 240-41.
19. Ibid., p. 244.
20. E. Perroy,as quoted in Thrupp, p. 244.
21. Philip Ziegler,The BlackDeath (New York: John Day Co., 1969; reprinted., Balti-
more: Penguin Books, Pelican Books, 1970), pp. 240-59.
22. See n. 8 above.

Boulding 106
rightbegan as partnerswiththeirhusbands and expanded the business

afterwidowhood. The well-to-domiddle-classwoman traderwas a famil-
iar figurein all the portcitiesof theMediterraneanfromPhoeniciantimes
on. Many of the firstconvertsto Christianitywere well-to-dowomen
merchantswho put theirhomes and theirwealth at the disposal of the
earlyChristiancommunities.The wealthiestGreek traderin Byzantium
in theMiddle Ages was a woman,23and womentradersweremajor figures
in Bristol in the 1400s.24 These were all middle-class women whose
enterpriseand abilityenabled themto "earn" thehelp theyneeded to free
themselvesfromthe burdens of the breeder-feederrole.
Somewhere on this continuum of producer roles for the urban
middle-classwoman, which runs the gamut fromthe almosttotallynon-
productivedisplaywifethroughthe independenttrader,thereexiststhe
craft partner,the woman who was jointly engaged with her spouse in
home-workshopproduction as a member of a craftguild. Where this
kindof economic partnershipexisted,theremayhave been considerable
sharing of the child-care part of the breeder role withthe spouse. The
craft-guildtradition, which began in the Mediterranean before the
ChristianEra, was one of husband-wifepartnershipwhichinvolvedboth
more equalityin the producer roles and morejoint involvementwiththe
children. The dividing line between teaching and nurturance faded
away when both spouses were engaged in the craft role. In addition,
everycraft-guildhousehold had outside childrenof the age of seven and
up in an apprentice relationship.Even in non-craft-guildfamiliesit was
common to send one's own children out to other households in the
communityand take others'childrenintoone's home to rear. This prac-
tice seems to have been a combinationof mutual boarding out, a way of
gettingextra household help, and a device for involvingothers in the
education of one's children.25Because people were raisingeach others'
children, men became more involved in the process than they might
have been had children stayed in theirown home.
The whole historyof the craft-guildmovementin England and on
the Continent(though more so in the formerthan the latter)is a history
of the involvementof women in the productiveprocess in partnership
roles with men. (There is less informationabout the relative roles of
fatherand mother in relation to children and production in rural set-
tings.) It may well be that the small-scale craft-guildenterprise that
predated the industrial revolution provided the setting of a more
egalitarian,less exploitativework and parenting partnershipthan any
other kind of work setting.
23. Philip Sherrard,Byzantium(New York: Time, Inc., 1966).
24. Eileen Power and M. M. Postan, Studiesin EnglishTrade in theFifteenthCentury
(London: George Routledge & Sons, 1933).
25. Peter Laslett,ed., Householdand Familyin Past Time(Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versityPress, 1972).

HouseholdSize and Familial Constraints

In the sixteenthcentury,the process of pushingwomen back inside
theirfamilies,denyingthen economic and other extradomesticinvolve-
ments, gained momentum. Household size became an importantcon-
straintand should be considered. Recent studies of local records in
various partsof Europe reveal the surprisingfactthathousehold size has
changed verylittlefromthe Middle Ages to the present.26Apart from
the great manor houses of the nobilityand the homes of richmerchants,
most people lived in familieswith an average size of 4.75 persons per
family,plus a servant.27Not only were familiessmall, but the marriage
age forwomen and men was beginningto rise. For European women in
the 1500s the average age at marriage was about twenty-one,risingin
succeeding centuriesto twenty-five and twenty-eight.Furthermore,be-
cause multigenerationalfamilieswere very much the exception, most
women were confined to very small domestic spaces in small families
before and after marriage. While women certainlyhad larger house-
holds during their childbearingyears, high infantdeath rates and the
practice of older couples and widows maintainingtheir own separate
quartersleftwomen in increasingdomesticisolationas theylost freedom
of movementin other spheres.
The tension level between mothersand daughters was apparently
veryhigh in this period. There are many mentionsof brutalchild rear-
ing,and particularlyof mothersbeatingdaughterswho resistedparental
marriageplans. Even the gentlepeace queen, Margaretof Navarre, beat
her daughter daily for weeks on end to make her agree to a politically
designed marriage choice. Agnes Paston of the lively Paston family,
known for its voluminous intrafamilycorrespondence and numerous
lawsuits,beat her daughter so badly that"her head was broke in 2 or 3
places." Lady Jane Gray'smotherbeat her. Since the records all referto
mothers,not fathers,beating theirdaughters,and thisin the contextof
an otherwise"good" familylife,it would seem thatwomen of thisperiod
were subject to severe emotional pressure which theyrelieved by child
beating. Sending daughters out to other familiesas servantswas one of
the few available means of relievingthe strain,but this required reci-
procityand acceptance of someone else's daughter into the home. The
disappearance of conventsin England and in many places in Europe,28
and the closing down of other occupational options for women, made
26. Ibid.
27. These "servants,"it turnsout, are not servantsin the contemporarysense of the
word but ratherchildren of neighboringfamiliesin the same parish.
28. The pressure on mothersto get rid of daughters also existed in the Middle Ages
at the heightof convent life,and many daughters were beaten half to death by mothers
who were tryingto force them into convents against their wills. There are interesting
records of lawsuitsof nuns who claimed that theyhad been forced to take vows by their
parents (see O'Faolian and Martines,pp. 270-75).

Boulding 108
marriagearrangementsincreasinglyimportantand also made marriages

harder to achieve. Mothersbore the bruntof these problemsin termsof
pressure to get theirdaughters out of theirsmall households.
The effectof a loweringstatusof women on mother-daughterrela-
tions is a subject that needs much more attention.Obviously not all
mothersbeat theirdaughters,and when therewere beatingstheydo not
seem to have led to ruptured relations. There was, rather,some con-
tinued expression of affectionbetween mothersand daughters in later
life.Women seem to have fledfromconfiningextended familysituations
whenever possible. This is supported by the factthatin the 1500s, even
withhousing shortages,16 percentof all English households in the 100
communitiesLaslettexamined were headed by women.29Of these, 12.9
percent were widows, 1.1 percent single females, and 2.3 percent
"unspecified females" in humble households, as well as estates. There
are many references to the joy with which women set up their own
households after widowhood and the vigor with which they resisted
courtingby amourous widowers.The extended familytogethernesswe
nostalgicallyreferto as partof our golden past simplydid not existin the
European heritage,and there is some evidence that it never reallyex-
isted on a large scale anywhere.
More important,perhaps, the pictureof women thatemerges from
this material is a useful correctiveto the popular misconceptionthat
women have throughouthistorysubmissivelyendured everything.They
endured a great deal, but theywere not necessarilysubmissive.
Alternatives to Familial Roles
During the entire historicalperiod from 500 B.C. to the industrial

revolution,there were importantalternativesfor women to being the
wife/mother in a male headed household or the family-burdenedfemale
head of a household. One alternativewas celibacy. The nun role has
existedfromearlytimesin Hinduism,in Buddhism, and finallyin Chris-
tianityand Islam. Although religious orders for women took different
forms in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, the basic pattern of an
alternativerole that did not involve the breeder-feederfunctionwas
present in all these societies. Between A.D. 500 and 1400 there was an
extraordinaryfloweringof conventculturein Europe. This culturepro-
in
duced science, art, and literature,and a social service infrastructure
the fields of health, education, and welfare unparalleled until the
nineteenthcentury.While nuns were in one sense isolated withinthe
male-dominantstructureof the Catholic church, in another sense they
lived in protected niches withinwhich they could be free. And if the
29. Laslett,p. 147.

price they paid for that freedom was celibacy,there is real evidence of
the creativityand joy of conventlifein those centuries(as well as before
and since). The nineteenthand twentiethcenturieshave seen a second
explosion of creativitythrough celibacy,partlywithinreligious orders
and partlyoutside of them. Today, there are approximately2 million
nuns in the world fromall the major religioustraditions.
In addition to the celibacy in the convent, there was the
beguinage30-an urban secular commune for rural women migrantsto
the city during the major urban migrationsof the 1200s and 1300s.
Invented by women, the beguinages were so successfulthat they were
seen as serious threats to some of the existing craft guilds and were
persecuted by them. Besides the beguines there were also
hermitesses-women solitarieswho lived in hutsbybridges,on the edges
of towns,and in forestsolitudes all over England and, to a lesser extent,
in Europe. These were a special class of independents in the Middle
Ages-able to support themselvesthrough their knowledge of human
nature and folkmedicine. With no institutionalprotectionof any kind,
mostof them were burned as witchesduring the heightof the medieval
witch mania. Last, there were the vagabonds, the hardworkingfun-
lovingwomen who moved partnerlessthroughthe Middle Ages, always
able to pick up the pennies theyneeded at a fairor celebrationof some
kind. When theywere willingto settle in a town, they were not infre-
quently supported by town councils, glad to have residententertainers
for their community. Besides being entertainers,they ran the soup
kitchensand the first-aidstationsin wars,includingthe Crusades. They
were good soldiers when theywere needed as fighters.Altogether,they
were a social categoryforwhichwe would have no labels today.Marriage
was not on theiragenda, and at timesup to one-fourthof the women of
Europe belonged in theircompany.
The End of an Era
During the late 1500s and the 1600s many of the phenomena de-
scribed above began to disappear. The craftwomen,the celibates,and
the vagabonds all declined in numbers and status.In the guilds in par-
ticulartherewas a rapid loss of rightsand statusesforwomen. Men were
feelingthe pressure of women as competitorsin the labor marketand
successfullypressed for their expulsion from guild after guild. This
transitionera intiatedthe prolonged sufferingof both rural and urban
female laborers as they were squeezed out of secure medieval work
statuses.The hermitessor vagabond of the fourteenthcenturybecame
30. This was a religiouslybased social movement,but the women werenotin religious
orders (see ErnestW. McDonnell, TheBeguinesand Beghardsin MedievalCulture[New York:
Octagon Books, 1969]).

Boulding 110
the work-deadened automaton of the seventeenthand eighteenthcen-

turies.Rural laboringwomen wenthungy,and the childrenof women in
the factorieswere rounded up like cattle. Married and single women
alike were trapped by the formulaof "supplemental" pittancewages for
women.
This was also the period when the gentlewomanin straitenedcir-
cumstancesappeared-the middle-classwoman withouttrainingand re-
sources who could not enterdomesticservicebecause of her social status.
She became a governessor a companion in homes of slightlybetteroff
middle-classpeople, workingforlittlemore thanbread and board, often
in a position close to thatof the household slave of Greek and Roman
times.Justbelow her in stationwas the domestic,even more of a house-
hold slave. By the 1700s, these women began to emigrate overseas to
new hardships,but also to new opportunities.
It is thisperiod thatwitnessedthe emergenceof the Marxistanalysis
of the situation of women. Women and men alike, whether Saint-
Simonians or anarchistsocialistsor Marxian socialists,all saw the neces-
sityfor societyto deal withthe burden of the breeder-feederrole that
entrapped women by providing child care and domestic maintenance
for everyone. However, no one looked back to the timewhen men had
shared part of the breeder-feederrole. Everything(except biological
childbearing) was to be taken over by the state. If this proposal asked
nothingof men, it had the virtueof helping marriedand singlewomen
heads of household equally.
Since no socialiststate could affordto duplicate the individualized
breeder-feederrole of women as a public service,and no capitaliststate
wanted to, it was easy to turn this task back to women in the end. The
famous Ellen Key "returnto matriarchymovement"to restorefulllegal
head of household rightsto women independentlyof maritalstatushas
to be seen in that context. Indeed, all the nineteenth-century utopian
movements from Brook Farm to New Harmony left women's roles
unchanged. Only the Shakers and the Mormons offeredsomethingdif-
ferent;the formerthe freedom of celibacy,the latterthe freedom of
co-wives with whom to share farm labor. Both attracted women in
droves.
It was a hard centuryforworkingwomen, and it was an unsettling
one for middle-class women who had been led to expect something
different-some kind of equality.All the women-triggeredsocial reform
movements of the nineteenth century and all their concrete
achievements-protectivelegislativeenactmentsand new typesof social
service institutions-could not take the edge off the bitternessof unac-
knowledged colleagueship. Women were invited,welcomed, urged into
the labor force-but at bargain prices; workingwas to be an avocation.
The breeder-feederrole was here to stayas the unremittingbackground
rhythmto all other activitiesof women. Even in the socialistcountries,
where women were the most needed and mostwelcomed into the labor

Table 2
WorkdayTime Budgets of Employed Women and Employed M

(Percentage of Each Sex Participatingin PrimaryActivitie
Six Cities Jackson,M
of France Torun, Poland USA
Work (Job) Women Men Women Men Women M
Housework* ............... 95.2 58.4 98.2 58.2 93.8 5

Other household
obligationst.............. 52.9 63.5 45.3 53.9 56.6 4
Child caret ................ 31.0 24.8 41.6 30.8 35.8
Personal needs?
(includes sleep) ........... 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 10
Study and participationll.... 8.8 9.7 18.0 19.2 13.6 1
Mass media# .............. 69.0 82.7 75.1 88.0 76.1 8
Leisure** .................. 79.2 83.4 64.1 74.8 74.7 6
Traveltt ................... 88.8 95.0 99.1 98.5 100.0 10
SoURCE.-From Alexander S/alai, The LC\e of Time (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1972), pp. 584, 588.
NOTE.-Data ale weightedto ensure equality of days ot the week and number of eligible respondents
per househ
*Includes cooking, home hlores,laundry,marketing.
tincltides garden, animal care, errands, shopping, other household acti ities.
fincludes child care, other child-ielated activities.
?Inluides personal care, eating, sleep.
Illnclides study,religion,organi/ation.
#Includes radio, TV (home), rv (away), read paper, read magazine, read books, mnoies.
**Includes social (holmne),
social (away), consersation,active sports,outdoors, entertainmient,
cultural events,restin
tiltlncludestravelto work,personal traxel,leisure travel.

Boulding 112
force,they were expected to carryon the same breeder-feederrole at

home afterhours.
The Presentand PossibleFutures

The UNESCO Time Budget Series shows withstartlingclaritythat
every married woman who works today stillbears the tripleburden of
breeder-feeder-producers. The Szalai study,31fromwhichtables2 and 3
are taken,included twelvecountriesand show remarkableconsistence.I
have selected four countriesthat representfour distincttypesof "work
culture."Because timebudgets would differfordifferentgroups within
the same city,as well as betweencitiesin the same country,and between
countries,all figuresmustbe treatedas givinggeneral indicationsonly.
Table 2 gives the percentage of women and men participatingin
primaryactivitiesand table 3 the number of minutesspent per day on
these activities.Not surprisingly,more employed women than men do
houseworkand child care; the differencesrange from25 to 45 percent.
Fewer women engage in studyand participation,or in use of the mass-
media than men. Everyone sleeps, has some free time, and travels
(whetheron foot or otherwise)to work and to do errands, so here any
figuresunder 100 percentare artifactsof the enumerationprocedures.
It is in table 3 thatwe begin to get the concretepictureof daily life.
In no country do employed men spend more than half an hour on
housework, and employed women less than an hour and a half, even
though women's workinghours outside the home are sometimeslonger
than men's. In some areas men spend a few more minutes on "other
household obligations"than women, in some not. Time spent in child
care alone as a primaryactivityis, according to this data, never more
than half an hour, even for women. But this is somewhat misleading,
since most child care runs concurrently with other activities
-housework, use of media, and freetime. In fact,child care is continu-
ous for women during all hours theyare not at work. Only in Pakov,
USSR, do employed fathersgive as much "primarycare" to childrenas
employed mothers.Only in the United States do women spend more
time on personal needs and sleep than men.
The mostconsistentdifferencesbetweenwomen's and men's use of
time,apart fromhousework,show up in the figuresfor studyand par-
ticipation,for mass media, and for leisure. Women have substantially
fewer minutes to spend on each activitywithinthese categories. Given
the wide variations in the cultures represented,there is a remarkable
overall consistencyin the use of timeby employed femalesas compared
withemployed males. Women's timeis farmore constrainedthan men's,
as it has probablyalwaysbeen since huntingand gatheringdays. House-
hold appliances and ready-to-use products or services for domestic
31. Alexander Szalai, The Use of Time (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1972).

Table 3
Workday Time Budgets of Employed Women and Employed M

(Time Spent in PrimaryActivities,in Average Minutes per Da
Six Cities Jackson, M

of France Torun, Poland USA
Work (Job) Women Men Women Men Women M
Housework* ............... 156 26 180 31 133

Other household
obligationst .............. 17 32 20 29 31
Child caret ................ 24 8 27 20 16
Personal need
(includes sleep)? .......... 621 621 543 560 590
Study and participationIt .... 7 9 23 25 17
Mass media# .............. 47 76 70 117 65
Leisure** .................. 60 70 56 71 63
Traveltt ................... 57 75 86 91 73
Total minutes .......... 1,440 1,440 1,440 1,400 1,440 1,

SOURCE.-Szalai, pp. 583, 587. Data are weighted to ensure equality ot days of the week and number ot eligible r
NOTE.-See notes to table 2.

Boulding 114
maintenanceor child care help somewhat,but the stubbornfactremains

thatthe privatespaces of the home and the privateshapes of individual
lives cannot be fullymass serviced. Somethingremains that individuals
must do. Must these individualsalways be women?
If the privatespaces of the home were closed down and everyone
adopted communal living,home maintenancecould be simplified.And
if one simplystopped having children.... But there is no evidence that
these are happening. In the United States,forexample, therehas been a
steady decrease in the number of married couples withouttheir own
households (fig. 1). First marriages,and remarriagesfor the divorced,
Percent
1 - 10
-9
-8
1940 '50 '55 '60 '65 70

FIG. 1.-Married couples without their own households: United States, 1940-72.
SOURCE.-From Social Indicators,1973, writtenand compiled by the StatisticalPolicyDivi-
sion, Officeof Management and Budget, and prepared for publicationby the Social and
Economic StatisticsAdministration,U.S. Department of Commerce (Washington,D.C.:
GovernmentPrintingOffice, 1973), p. 199.

continue at a rate that makes American societymuch more "married"

than the European societyof the Middle Ages. And although families
are decreasing in size in the West, there are no signs of children being
given up as a project of the human race. Commune formationmay be
continuingat about the same rate as in the previous decade, but so does
commune dissolution.Most young people in the United States who are
attractedto communes evidentlygo througha commune initiationand
then "go private." Private quarters, in socialist countries, in kibbutz-
proud Israel, and commune-proud China, are valued as much as any-
where.
In the Middle Ages there were beguinages, hermitages,and small
family households. In the twentiethcentury there are communes,
single-personhouseholds, and nuclear families.However we label them,
these various typesof social organization to meet human maintenance
needs are probablyall enduring featuresof the human landscape. The
mix simplydiffersin differentperiods of history,depending on the ratio
of singleto attachedwomen and on reproductiverates.Children are also
enduring features of the human landscape. When women have too
heavy a work burden withthe triplebreeder-feeder-producerrole, the
whole society suffers.Women sufferrole overstrain,men sufferrole
deprivation,and children sufferfrom inadequate experiences of relat-
ing to the human community.
Marxistanalysisfailed to put itsfingeron one aspect of the oppres-
sion of women: the confiningof breeder-feeder roles to women. It
thoughtthat by turningthe state into the breeder-feederall would be
well. But human liberation depends on sharing breeder-feederroles
between women and men, as well as on having state-administeredsup-
portservices.The problemsof scale in human nurturanceare such that
relativelysmall livingunitswillalwaysbe required,no matterhow closely
integratedinto larger communal sharingunits.There is no way out for
men but to confrontparenthood, and no way out for women but to
confrontsharing their centuries-oldmonopoly on the breeder-feeder
role. The biological aspect of breeding is a minute part of the totalcare
that goes into the productionof an autonomous human being; there is
reallyverylittlethat men need to be excluded fromif one looks at the
totalityof the child-breedingprocess.
Another element missing in Marxist analysis is love. By failingto
deal in theoreticaltermswiththe special role of love and tendernessthat
enhances all other social interactionswhen present,and diminishesthem
when absent,Marx leftlove as women's workby default. It simplycould
not be taken over by the state.
One of the properties of love is that it acts to modifydominance
relations. For this reason love has been rejected by some women's
liberationistsas one more elementin a constellationof role expectations
thathas led to women's oppression. It has takenthe twentiethcenturyto

Boulding 116
produce the insightthat the particularkind of reciprocityrepresented

by love as agape, or caring,is a traitthatis equally desirable in men and
women. The men's liberationmovement,in settingout to destroyboth
the image and the realityof sex-linkeddominance behavior,may in the
end be the mostsignificantsocial movementof the twentiethcentury.By
liberatingthe potentialfortendernessin men, it undercutsmuch of the
rationale for sex-based dominance and sets the stage for a new kind of
involvementof men withchildren.
Equal involvementof women and men withchildrendoes not imply
that every woman, or every man, must have a partner for parenting.
Part of the new understandingof parentingis reflectedin court deci-
sions that allow sometimes men, sometimes women, sole custody of a
child when single-parentingbecomes necessary. Single parenting in-
volvesextraburdens,but when itis not sex linkeditbecomes clearer that
society should provide generalized "drawing rights" for persons of
either sex who undertake the care of small children alone. A concept
developed by Gosta Rehn, such a generalized set of rights"would make
available to women in monetaryform the help no longer available to
them in the form of unpaid mutual aid" and would include income
maintenanceduring timeout formotherhood.32(The generalizeddraw-
ing rightsidea was developed in connection withthe needs of women,
but in a dual parentingsocietythey should be available to any parent
who needs them.)
The alternativeto a new role sharing,supplemented witha variety
of support servicesfor single parents,is to concentrateon producing a
race of superwomen who can excel in the breeder-feederroles and also
in the producer roles. The researchon role transcendence,and the type
of woman who excels in all three of her human roles,33suggests that
what some women acquire by chance, through a biologicallyinherited
metabolic patternthat ensures abundant physicalenergy,could be de-
liberatelyprovided to all women by chemical interventionand genetic
engineering.Is thatthe way we wantto do it?Would men enjoy livingin
the shadow of a race of superwomen?Would women enjoy being super-
women? A reversalof dominance patternsmightbe enjoyable for some
in the shortrun,but in the long it runs leaves us withall the limitationof
the old male-dominance pattern.
The occupational roles of woman as producer and the constraintsof
familialbreeder-feederroles on thatoccupational role are the problems
this paper set out to consider. Through historicalanalysisI have shown
thatthe triplerole has alwaysbeen present.This is no new phenomenon
of the industrialrevolution,or of the twentiethcentury;nor is the wage
differentialrelated to the triple-rolehandicap new. What is new is a
32. Gosta Rehn, as quoted inJessieBernard,Women,Wives,Mothers:Valuesand Options
(Chicago: Aldine PublishingCo., 1975), p. 273.
33. Ibid., pp. 51-54.

vision of human potentialwhich is being applied to women as well as to

men and which inevitablyleads to the affirmationof equal rewards and
equal opportunitiesfor both sexes. The kind of creativitythat we now
see as possible forall human beings,and thatneeds to be fosteredfrom
earliestchildhood,depends in a verydirectsense on theexposure of men
to breeder-feederroles. This is where the male areas of freedom lie.
This is where the male constraints,ones that were not discussed in this
paper,34but whichare as punitivein theirway as the femaleconstraints,
must be broken. What is involvedhere is not the old battleof the sexes,
which was a battlefordominance, but a process of mutual liberationon
behalf of that gentlerand more creativegenerationto come-our chil-
dren's children.
of Colorado
University
34. The reader interestedin the phenomenon of male liberation,highlyrelevantto

thisclosingdiscussion,is referredto Warren Farrell,TheLiberatedMan: BeyondMasculinity,
FreeingMen and TheirRelationships withWomen(New York: Random House, 1974).


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Familial Constraints on Women's Work Roles

Author(s): Elise Boulding

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Familial Constraints on Women's

The nature of the familialconstraintson woman's role as worker in

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the agents and measurementsof productionarise. Woman's production

In huntingand gatheringsocietiesthe producer role of the male is

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observershave actuallyclocked the fullworkingtimeof women around

Agricultureprobablyemerged out of discoveriesof stands of wild

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(2) Crafts:sewing,weaving,basketand potterymaking,stone-

These firstagrovillageshad populationsof from100 to 200 people. If

6. The data base for discussion on the interrelationsbetween the integrationof

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Participationby Women in the Traditional Rural

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The Rise of UrbanCivilization

By the timemajor urban centersin Sumer and Egyptarose, a system

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referencesin contemporarydocumentsto courtbattlesfoughtbywomen

1. Occupations for women slaves (there were an estimated90,000

10. This listingrepresents a synthesisof informationabout Greek women from a

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other home-manufacturedproducts, unspecified. Selling of

The Male Head ofHouseholdFiction

11. Free men had so manyother advantages in ancient societiesthatthe existenceof

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heads of households were women. Many of these women were rearing

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ture. Withcash cropping and plantationagriculturecomes the develop-

14. See Boserup.

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Men continued to move to getjobs, but women withfamilyrespon-

18. Sylvia L. Thrupp, Changesin MedievalSocietyEuropeNorthoftheAlps,1050-1500

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rightbegan as partnerswiththeirhusbands and expanded the business

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HouseholdSize and Familial Constraints

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marriagearrangementsincreasinglyimportantand also made marriages

Alternatives to Familial Roles

During the entire historicalperiod from 500 B.C. to the industrial

29. Laslett,p. 147.

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The End of an Era

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the work-deadened automaton of the seventeenthand eighteenthcen-

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WorkdayTime Budgets of Employed Women and Employed M

Work (Job) Women Men Women Men Women M

Housework* ............... 95.2 58.4 98.2 58.2 93.8 5

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force,they were expected to carryon the same breeder-feederrole at

The Presentand PossibleFutures

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Workday Time Budgets of Employed Women and Employed M

Six Cities Jackson, M

Work (Job) Women Men Women Men Women M

Housework* ............... 156 26 180 31 133

Total minutes .......... 1,440 1,440 1,440 1,400 1,440 1,

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