Women Have Always Worked: An Historical Overview

Divided into five thematic sections, the book illustrates different aspects of women's paid and unpaid work, and shows how their roles have changed over the past two hundred years. Kessler-Harris weaves together the experiences of poor, wealthy, middle-class women; trade union, professional and volunteer women; immigrant, non-English speaking, and black women; tracking their labor from the colonial household to the factories and beyond.