Difference between revisions of "Week 15 Questions/Comments-327 09"
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(→Clara Lanza, 1891, defends the female office clerk in NY) |
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Last year I read a book about modern domestic service, an field that was mostly dominated by latin american women. In the book one of the discussions dealt with the comparisons between women who were live in housekeepers and those that commuted to their job from there own home. I wonder if there was any such comparison with 19th century domestic workers. I'd imagine that young girls were much more likely to live with their employers then older women in the service. But were domestic servants mostly young or older women?----Emma Peck | Last year I read a book about modern domestic service, an field that was mostly dominated by latin american women. In the book one of the discussions dealt with the comparisons between women who were live in housekeepers and those that commuted to their job from there own home. I wonder if there was any such comparison with 19th century domestic workers. I'd imagine that young girls were much more likely to live with their employers then older women in the service. But were domestic servants mostly young or older women?----Emma Peck | ||
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| + | As I was reading this chapter, I was most struck by the commonalities between factory and domestic workers during the industrial Revolution and their modern counterparts. This piece on domestic servants and the preceding article on piece-workers in particular reminded me of some of the observations from the book ''Nickled and Dimed''. The issue of free time and the fact that leisure time for the employer means more work than usual for the domestic servant were really prominent in that book as well as in this article. I think it's interesting that some of the basic disadvantages of these jobs seem relativly unchanged from the 19th century. I did find the list of advantages interesting; as someone else mentioned, I'd always thought of these women as working out of necessity, but this piece definitly makes it sound like there is some choice involved. The previous section on piece-workers reflects more of what I usually think of on the topic of poor working women of this time period- women who have to work because there is no other way to support their families. So I found it interesting that both shop girls and domestic servants are portrayed as having (some)other options, and choosing to go into or stay in their specific type of work.- Melissa Patterson | ||
== Isabel Eaton, 1899, research on black servants in Philadelphia == | == Isabel Eaton, 1899, research on black servants in Philadelphia == | ||
