For Better or For Worse? The Dual Economic Impact of the Industrial Revolution on Women

This paper examines the economic impact of the Industrial Revolution on the lives of working-class and middle-class women. It describes pre-industrial society, where family members laboured together to earn a living in a system known as the family economy. Industrialization disrupted this way of living by moving production from the household into factories. The family wage economy, where individual members laboured for wages to contribute to a common fund, soon replaced the family economy. This paper examines how industrialization changed the lives of women in Britain, France, and the US and finds that the impacts were often divergent. While factory work subjected working-class women to exploitative conditions, low pay, and exclusion from unions, it also provided them with greater independence from the family. In the middle class, the rise of the Cult of Domesticity granted women authority in the domestic sphere and offered new opportunities for female solidarity, but also reinforced restrictive gender norms. This paper argues that the short-term impacts of the Industrial Revolution, both the beneficial and the harmful, catalyzed long-term social change by awakening women’s feminine consciousness.