Abensour, Leon, La Femme et le feminisme en France avant la revolution. Geneva: Slatkine-Maganotis, 1923; 1966. The classic history of French women of the ancien regime with discussion of work and guilds.
Berg, Maxine, The Age of Manufactures: Industry, Innovation and Work in Britain, 1700-1820. London: Routledge, 1994. Key study on eighteenth-century manufacturing that embeds women and their significance into processes of industrialisation, exploring a range of domestic industries.
Bradley, Harriet, Men’s Work, Women’s Work. Oxford: Polity Press, 1989. Good overview of men and women’s work in Britain, dealing with specific areas of work.
Cammarosano, Simonetta Ortaggi, ‘Labouring Women in Northern and Central Italy in the Nineteenth Century’, in Society and Politics in the Age of the Risorgimento. Davis, John A. and Paul Ginsborg, eds, pp. 152-83. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1991. Excellent regional study.
Canning, Kathleen, Languages of Labor and Gender: Female Factory Work in Germany, 1850-1914. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Focuses on the changing meanings of women’s work in Germany during the shift from agrarian to the industrial state, with emphasis on gender, rhetoric and imagery as well as women’s self-perceptions.
De Groot, Gertjan and Marlou Schrover, eds, Women Workers and Technological Change in Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Cen~turies. London: Taylor & Francis, 1995. Excellent collection with good geographic coverage, including Scandinavia and the Netherlands, focusing on the relationship between women and technology.
Duchen, Claire, Women’s Rights and Women’s Lives in France, 1944-1968. London: Routledge, 1994. Situates work in debates about women’s place and women’s rights in post-war France.
Engel, Barbara Alpern, Between the Fields and the City: Women, Work and Family in Russia, 1861-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Examines the significance of Russian peasant women’s migration from villages to factories and cities.
Farnsworth Beatrice and Lynne Viola, eds, Russian Peasant Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. An important collection of articles, several directly on work, others contextualising it in the lives of peasant women before and after the revolution.
Frader, Laura L. and Sonya O. Rose, eds, Gender and Class in Modern Europe. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1996. A superb collection of articles addressing gender and work.
Franzoi, Barbara, At the Very Least She Pays the Rent: Women and German Industrialization, 1871-1914. London and Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985. Examines the relationship between female labour and production processes focusing on women at the intersection of work and family.
Glucksmann, Miriam, Women Assemble: Women Workers and New Industries in Inter-War Britain. London: Routledge, 1990. Detailed study of the new industries with good insights on workplace relationships and the culture of women as workers.
Gordon, Eleanor and Esther Breitenbach, eds, The World is Ill Divided: Women’s Work in Scotland in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990. Path-breaking collection of articles on women’s work in Scotland.
Gullickson, Gay, L., Spinners and Weavers of Auffay. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Detailed regional study of workers during the transition from domestic industry to factory work; explores negotiations between male and female roles.
Hausen, Karin, ed., Frauen Suchen Ihre Geschichte. Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 1987. Excellent collection of articles on German women; articles by Ellerkamp and Jungmann, Meyer, Schulte and Wierling relate to home and work.
Hilden, Patricia Penn, Women, Work and Politics: Belgium 1830-1914. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Good insights to women’s work in Belgium, especially issues of the factory.
Hill, Bridget, Women, Work and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-Century England. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Detailed empirical survey that takes a life-cycle approach to women’s work.
Hudson, Pat and W. R. Lee, eds, Women’s Work and the Family Economy in Historical Perspective. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990. Collection of thematically linked essays in which the authors challenge a view of history that sees women as participating in social processes defined in terms of male experience.
Hufton, Olwen, The Prospect Before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe, 1500-1800.
London: Fontana Press, 1995. This authoritative survey gives a well-rounded view of women in Europe.
John, Angela V., ed., Unequal Opportunities: Women’s Employment in England, 1800-1918. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Collection of articles on a range of women’s work with a helpful introduction discussing overarching issues.
McBride, Theresa, The Domestic Revolution: The modernisation of Household Ser-vice in England and France, 1820-1920. London: Croom Helm, 1976. Slightly ageing, this is still the classic comparative study of domestic service.
Maynes, Mary Jo, Birgitte Soland and Christina Benninghaus, eds, Secret Gardens, Satanic Mills: Placing Girls in European History, 1750-1960. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2004. A number of articles link girls’ work to their experiences of growing up, leisure and sexuality.
Mouvement Social, 1987, 140. A special issue on work, particularly useful for nineteenth - and twentieth-century France.
Ogilvie, Sheilagh, A Bitter Living: Women, Markets and Social Capital in Early Modern Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. An excellent detailed empirical study, including the eighteenth century, exploring the character of women’s work and the factors that shaped it.
Pinchbeck, Ivy, Women Workers and the Industrial Re-volution 1750-1850, 3rd edn. London: Virago, 1981. The classic study of women workers in Britain.
Quataert, Jean, H. ‘The Shaping of Women’s Work in Manufacturing Guilds, Households and the State in Central Europe, 1648-1870’, American Historical Re-view, 90, 1985, pp. 1122-48. Important article analysing the issues of honourable and dishonourable work and the centrality of gender.
Reynolds, Sian, France Between the Wars: Gender and Politics. London: Routledge, 1996. Provides important insights to the interplay of work, gender and society in the inter-war period.
Rose, Sonya, O., Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century England. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1992. Argues that gender was a central organising principle of the nineteenth-century industrial transformation in England.
Sharpe, Pamela, ed., Women’s Work, The English Experience, 1650-1914. London: Arnold, 1998. Incorporates key articles on Englishwomen’s work, with linking commentary and integrating empirical and theoretical studies.
Simonton, Deborah. A History of European Women’s Work, 1700 to the present. London: Routledge, 1998. A survey, it fleshes out the arguments of this chapter.
Tilly, Louise and Joan Scott, Women, Work and Family, 2nd edn. London: Methuen, 1987. Since publication in 1978, the classic account of women’s work and its relationship to family in France and England based around three economic family formations.
Valenze, Deborah, The First Industrial Woman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Important work examining underlying assumptions of gender and women’s centrality to the economic development of England.
Verdon, Nicola, Rural Women Workers: Gender, Work and Wages in the Nineteenth-Century Countryside. London: Boydell, 2002. Accessible study that explores English rural women’s economic opportunities contextualised by region, age, marital status, children and local custom.
Whelan, Bernadette, ed., Women and Work in Ireland, 1500-1930. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000. Collection of articles covering key areas of women’s work in Ireland; useful overview chapter.
Willson, Perry R., The Clockwork Factory, Women and Work in Fascist Italy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. A detailed industry study with excellent insight into the work relationships in ‘new industries’ and the issues of work for twentieth-century Italian women.
World History
