Husbandry to Housewifery: Women, Economic Change, and Housework in Ireland, 1890-1914

This book examines the lives of Irish women between 1890 and 1914, tracing the shift of their labor out of the fields and into the home. Joanna Bourke shows how, in this period, women's position within the employment market deteriorated: married women came to be increasingly dependent on their husbands' wages and economic opportunities for unmarried and widowed women collapsed. Women increasingly devoted all their time to performing housework. Bourke analyzes the crucial elements in this change: the coincidence of sectoral shifts in the employment market, investment in the rural economy, and the growth of a labor and capital intensive household sector. Controversially, she demonstrates that Irish women welcomed their altered role, finding housework preferable to many of the other options available to them.