Book Review: Women, Work and Family

This is a Korean translation of the new edition of Louise A. Tilly and Joan W. Scott’s 1978 book, which I bought from a used bookstore a while ago and had been keeping aside. I want to create a thread and gradually post summaries as I read through it.

Book Information

Written by Louise Tilly, Joan Wallach Scott. Translated by Kim Young, Park Ki-nam, Jang Kyung-sun. “Women, Work, and Family”. Humanitas (2008)

Preface to Korean Edition

The authors aimed to refute “the notion that wage income would inevitably have an emancipatory nature by not only improving economic conditions but also completing individuality and contributing to citizenship acquisition.” They thought this was the experience of a specific class - modern middle-class women.

Through their research, the authors reached three main conclusions:

• Women’s economic situations were much more continuous rather than sharply divided by industrialization.
• The Industrial Revolution had less impact than expected. This was due to an excessive focus on women employed in factories.
• Improvements in working conditions and access to citizenship were not results of labor market participation, but rather achieved through organized workers’ movements and feminist movements with much sacrifice.

These results focused on Britain and France, which the authors knew well, and may differ from Korea’s case which experienced industrialization at a different time and was subject to different domestic and international influences. However, they hoped it would provide opportunities to raise various questions in comparison with Korea’s results. Questions like what were the differences in the impacts of industrialization in each country, whether the described practices appeared similarly, whether they were modified to fit Korea’s cultural traditions, and so on.

Preface to New Edition

The authors aimed to examine two agendas through this book:

1. Whether work improved women’s status / changed women’s roles within families
2. What impact the rapid changes associated with the Industrial Revolution had on women

Their research findings can be summarized as follows:

• The mere fact that women participated in wage labor does not mean improvement in women’s social status.
• Women’s participation in wage labor was based on family strategy, and was one way of fulfilling what was traditionally considered women’s responsibilities.
• The occupations women engaged in were gendered, and women’s labor has been combined with low-skill and low-wages.

Chapter1. Family Economy in Pre-industrial Britain and France

Section1. Economy and Population Section2. Family Economy and Unmarried Women Section3. Family Economy and Married Women

Chapter2. Industrialization and Family Wage Economy

Section4. Industrialization Section5. Population Changes Section6. Family Wage Economy and Women

Chapter3. Towards Family Consumer Economy

Section7. Changes in Occupation and Population Section8. Family Consumer Economy and Women Section9. Changes in Women's Employment After World War II