John Augustine has an excellent essay: A Woman’s Place:
One Catholic’s Perspective on Women in Family & Society, Past, Present, & Future.
Read it. Then re-read it. That’s what I’m going to do.
John Augustine does a great job of picking up threads I’ve found in G. K. Chesterton and Wendell Berry, expands on early feminist and anti-feminist repsonses to the changing roles of women due to the Industrial Revolution, and seasons with much quotation from “Il Papa Feminista” (“the feminist pope”).
A beginning excerpt:
People my age, raised in the 70s & 80s after the advent of “second wave” feminism, have generally been taught (implicitly and explicitly) that until Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique all married women were housewives, who polished floors and baked cookies, and all married men were “breadwinners,” who worked outside the home as doctors, mechanics, etc. We watched the “Leave It to Beaver” reruns on afternoon TV and we saw the struggle of women in the workplace in movies like “9 to 5.” … And so we developed this idea that June Cleaver was every woman of the past and now things, for better or worse (usually both), were changing.But we were very, very mistaken, because our Ozzie & Harriet understanding of women (and men) in history was ridiculously shortsighted.
Journey with me way back in the day, before the Industrial Revolution, in your imagination. There’s pretty much always been some kind of sexual division of labor in most societies (a division different from society to society), but it looked nothing like the recent past. Why? Because almost everyone, men and women, did most of their work at or very close to home. Consider the following list of pre-industrial jobs:
- Agrarians/Farmers – raising animals for milk, meat, wool, leather, etc.; growing various plants like grains, vegetables, fruits, herbs, textile crops, etc.; doing numerous farm-related jobs like making & repairing tools, making & repairing clothes, etc.
- Craftsmen & Artisans – including smiths, coopers, cobblers, candlers, carpenters, weavers, etc.
- Other Small Tradesmen – including grocers, clarks, bankers, millers, bakers, butchers, printers (later), import/exporters, etc.
In most cases, the “business” was operated from or very close to the family home (e.g. a shop with an apartment above or behind), and the wife and children were just as active in the business as the husband. In the not-so-distant past, “business” was always considered a part of the “private” sector because it was a personal and/or familial interest. Only matters of civic culture, like government and public works (e.g. public libraries), were considered the “public” sector.
There’s more, and it’s good. But why are you still reading here, read it.
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