Space, Place, and Gender
The Sexual and Spatial Division of Labor in the Early Modern Household
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7796983 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Amanda Flather (University of Essex, corresponding author), AMANDA J FLATHER |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 52 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 344-360 |
| Publication date | 2013-10-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History and Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-2656 • E-ISSN: 1468-2303 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/hith.10673 |
| OpenAlex | W2039705304 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 12 |
Much has been written about the history of the work of men and women in the premodern past. It is now generally acknowledged that early modern ideological assumptions about a strict division of work and space between men and productive work outside the house on the one hand, and women and reproduction and consumption inside the house, on the other, bore little relation to reality. Household work strategies, out of necessity, were diverse. Yet what this spatial complexity meant in particular households on a day‐to‐day basis and its consequences for gender relationships is less clear and has received relatively little historical attention. The aim of this paper is to add to our knowledge through a case study of the way that men and women used and organized space for work in the county of Essex during the “long seventeenth century”. Drawing on critiques of the concept of “separate spheres” and the models of economic change to which it relates, together with local/micro historical methods, it places evidence within an appropriate regional context to argue that spatial patterns were enormously varied in early modern England and a number of factors—time, place, occupation, and status, as well as gender—determined them. Understanding of the dynamic, complex, uneven purchase of patriarchy upon the organization, imagination, and experience of space has important implications for approaches to gender relations in early modern England. It raises additional doubts about the utility of the separate spheres analogy, and particularly the use of binary oppositions of male/female and public/private, to describe gender relations and their changes in this period and shows that a deeper understanding demands more research into the local contexts in which the gendered division and meaning of work was negotiated
Analogy · Consumption (sociology) · Context (archaeology) · Division of labour · Epistemology · Ideology · Patriarchy · Political science · Politics · Relation (database) · Reproduction · Separate spheres · Social science · Sociology · Space (punctuation) · Gender Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law
The Whole Economy
Being a nomad in one’s home
The gendered dimensions of London’s last bubonic plague epidemic 1665–1666
A mother’s voice and a child’s view
Work and workplaces in early modern Naples
Gendered space and climate resilience in informal settlements in Khulna City, Bangladesh
Examining Temporality and Difference
Servants to the hospital and the state
Thinking Through Change
Crafting the Renaissance
Where is place in the history of work? Worksites, workspaces, and the home-work nexus
The gender division of labour in early modern England
| Citations per year | 1.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2018 - 2026 (9) |
| Highly cited | No |