section_path: Social effects/Effect on women and family life
section_name: Effect on women and family life
paragraph_text: Effect on women and family life
  
  Women's historians have debated the effect of the Industrial Revolution and capitalism generally on the status of women. Taking a pessimistic side, Alice Clark argues that when capitalism arrived in 17th-century England, it lowered the status of women as they lost much of their economic importance. Clark argues that in 16th-century England, women were engaged in many aspects of industry and agriculture. The home was a central unit of production, and women played a vital role in running farms and in some trades and landed estates. Their useful economic roles gave them a sort of equality with their husbands. However, Clark argues, as capitalism expanded in the 17th century, there was more division of labour with the husband taking paid labour jobs outside the home, and the wife was reduced to unpaid household work. Middle- and upper-class women were confined to an idle domestic existence, supervising servants; lower-class women were forced to take poorly paid jobs. Capitalism, therefore, had a negative effect on powerful women.
  
  In a more positive interpretation, Ivy Pinchbeck argues that capitalism created the conditions for women's emancipation. Tilly and Scott have emphasised the continuity in the status of women, finding three stages in English history. In the pre-industrial era, production was mostly for home use, and women produced much of the needs of the households. The second stage was the "family wage economy" of early industrialisation; the entire family depended on the collective wages of its members, including husband, wife, and older children. The third or modern stage is the "family consumer economy", in which the family is the site of consumption, and women are employed in large numbers in retail and clerical jobs to support rising standards of consumption.
  
  Ideas of thrift and hard work characterised middle-class families as the Industrial Revolution swept Europe. These values were displayed in Samuel Smiles ' book Self-Help, in which he states that the misery of the poorer classes was "voluntary and self-imposed—the results of idleness, thriftlessness, intemperance, and misconduct."