Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T17:24:56.019Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Strength and Power in the Industrial Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Claudia Goldin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Joyce Burnette's (2008) book investigates why women earned lower wages and had different occupations than men during the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Of more relevance in the present is why women often have lower earnings than and work in different occupations from men today. The answers from the past and present have some similarity, but the differences are considerably greater. The world of “brawn” jobs was transformed by technological change and sectoral shifts into a world of “brain” jobs. I will first address the question posed in the book and will end with that concerning today.

Type
Special Section: Debating Gender, Work, and Wages: A Roundtable Discussion
Information
Social Science History , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , Winter 2009 , pp. 473 - 479
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2009 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bertrand, Marianne, Goldin, Claudia, and Katz, Lawrence F. (2009) “Dynamics of the gender gap for young professionals in the financial and corporate sectors.” NBER Working Paper no. 14681, January.Google Scholar
Burnette, Joyce (2008) Gender, Work, and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dublin, Thomas (1979) Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826–1860. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia (2002) “A pollution theory of discrimination: Male and female occupations and earnings.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 8985, June.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia (2006) “The rising (and then declining) significance of gender,” in Blau, Francine D., Brinton, Mary C., and Grusky, David B. (eds.) The Declining Significance of Gender? New York: Russell Sage Foundation: 67–101.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia, and Katz, Lawrence F. (2008) “Transitions: Career and family lifecycles of the educational elite.” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 98: 363–69.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia, and Sokoloff, Kenneth (1984) “The relative productivity hypothesis of industrialization: The American case, 1820 to 1850.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 99: 461–88.Google Scholar
Lazonick, William (1984) “Rings and mules in Britain: A reply.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 99: 393–98.Google Scholar
Sandberg, Lars G. (1969) “American rings and English mules: The role of economic rationality.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 83: 25–43.Google Scholar