Hatton on Burnette, _Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain_

[Book Reviews in Economic and Business History]

Published by EH.NET (December 2008)

Joyce Burnette, _Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution 
Britain_. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xii + 377 pp. $99 
(hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-521-88063-3.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Timothy J. Hatton, Department of Economics, 
Australian National University.


Joyce Burnette’s book provides a highly revisionist view of the position 
of women in the labor market during the century from 1750 to 1850.  To 
say that this is contested terrain would be a gross understatement and 
Burnette’s reinterpretation directly confronts, and seeks to overturn, 
much of what historians have argued.  In particular she challenges those 
who believe that occupational segregation and gender wage gaps must be 
interpreted as social phenomena that are rooted in custom and gender 
ideology. She argues instead that much of what is observed can be 
interpreted as the work of markets. An overarching theme of the book is 
that the custom, culture and ideology of gender divisions were largely 
shaped by labor market imperatives, and not the other way around.

Burnette’s analysis is rooted firmly in the neoclassical theory of 
competitive labor markets. She asserts that gender differences in labor 
market outcomes can be explained by two key biological differences 
between men and women: men’s superior physical strength and women’s 
unique ability to bear children. “Can be explained” is the operative 
phrase as the alternative interpretations are often observationally 
equivalent. Nevertheless Burnette strives to discriminate between 
neoclassical interpretations of the labor market and less sharply 
specified alternatives. While the objective is to push this argument as 
far as possible, the author recognizes that there are limits. In 
significant sectors of the labor market, institutional forces were 
important; but according to Burnette, labor market segmentation and its 
concomitant wage effects were driven by the self interest of those with 
market power and not specifically by gender ideology.

Chapters 1 and 2 lay out the evidence on women’s occupational 
distribution and the gender wage gap. Data from the census, employment 
records and business directories are used to highlight three key 
features. The first is the well known fact that women’s employment was 
highly concentrated, generally in low wage occupations. The second is 
that, despite this concentration, women were represented in small 
numbers in almost all occupations. And the third is that patterns of 
employment were not immutable; they changed considerably in the course 
of the industrial revolution. On wages, Burnette argues that the 
literature has often underestimated women’s wages relative to men’s on a 
like-for-like basis. This is because women often worked shorter hours, 
possessed lower skill levels and -- especially for jobs that required 
physical strength -- women’s productivity was lower than men’s. Focusing 
on piece rates she shows that the ‘true’ ratio of women’s wages to men’s 
is in the range three fifths to three quarters rather than between a 
third and a half. Along the way she inveighs against those who focus on 
fairness or on relative effort, insisting that wages depend on what 
workers produce and not on what they deserve.

Surely the occupational segregation that is so commonly observed is 
prima facie evidence that women were kept out of the more remunerative 
occupations by custom, convention and discrimination, especially given 
the evidence that women could do many of the jobs that were largely the 
preserve of men. Not so, argues Burnette.  In unskilled occupations the 
sorting of employment by gender can be largely explained by comparative 
advantage -- that is by the underlying differences in the endowments of 
women and men. In the occupations that required strength men had a 
comparative advantage; by contrast women had comparative advantage in 
sectors such as cottage industry where they could combine work with 
child care. Perhaps the most compelling illustration, which recurs 
throughout the book, is in cotton textiles. Before the industrial 
revolution women spun and men weaved; the spinning mule required 
strength and so spinning became a male domain. Yet while many of 
Burnette’s illustrations are convincing, some occupations simply don’t 
fit. For example laundry work was notoriously heavy work and yet it was 
almost exclusively done by women, while other occupations like tailoring 
and hairdressing, which were less physically demanding, remained the 
province of men.

Drawing on her earlier research, Burnette provides econometric evidence 
to show that men and women were substitutes across a range of 
occupations. Using Arthur Young’s data for individual farms she finds 
that where men’s wages were higher (reflecting their scarcity) women’s 
employment was higher too. The implication is that women were not just 
potential substitutes -- they were actually substituted for men. An 
alternative test of substitution versus segmentation is that, looking 
across localities, men’s and women’s wages were positively correlated. 
The interpretation here is that male labor scarcity drove up women’s 
wages if the two were substitutes. But this test is not clear cut -- a 
positive correlation between wages by gender (even across seasons in the 
same location) could simply reflect the impact of common demand shocks 
on otherwise segmented labor markets.

Many readers would doubt that gender pay gaps and occupational 
segregation could be explained by biological endowments beyond obvious 
examples where physical strength was at a premium. Chapter 5 argues that 
while such effects were pervasive in the unskilled occupations where 
there was little to impede competition, the same cannot be said of 
skilled occupations. Burnette claims that access to skilled occupations 
was restricted by formal or informal trade unionism (rather than by 
employers), even though such associations were illegal under the 
Combination Acts until 1824. Where unionism was strong (more so among 
English compositors, mule spinners and miners than among their Scottish 
counterparts) and male workers had some source of economic leverage, 
women were successfully excluded.

Chapter 6 goes on to explore a mixed bag of non-manual occupations. As 
is well known, in fields such as law, medicine and in the church, 
growing professionalization increased the power to exclude. By contrast, 
in areas such as teaching where there was essentially free entry, women 
were well represented. But they were underrepresented in business and in 
self-employment generally. Restricted access to capital could be the 
culprit but this gets limited support. Women’s lack of legal 
independence from their husbands seems more likely, but in Burnette’s 
view, women’s enterprise was constrained because competitive pressures 
did not permeate the family. Here we come close to reasserting the 
importance of gender ideology and abandoning neoclassical arguments 
(such as those of Gary Becker).

A final chapter examines the trend in women’s participation, which 
appears to have been declining in the middle decades of the nineteenth 
century.  The essential argument is that growing occupational 
segregation tended to reduce overall demand for women’s labor while 
growing male incomes raised women’s reservation wages through household 
income effects. These forces combined to reduce women’s supply of market 
work. But it is unclear whether these forces alone are sufficient, and 
Burnette concedes that trends in gender ideology might have been 
important even though it is not possible to distinguish between cause 
and effect. Although the great diversity of participation rates across 
regions and localities offers potential tests of such hypotheses 
(especially as labor market conditions are more localized than ideology) 
this dimension is rather neglected. In general, a fuller account of the 
evolution of women’s work from a regional perspective would have 
strengthened some of the analysis in the later chapters.

Joyce Burnette’s book provides an account of women’s work during the 
industrial revolution that is thoroughly researched and cogently argued. 
What makes it so powerful is the uncompromising application of 
neoclassical economics, which provides the book with the coherence and 
internal consistency that other approaches often lack. That flavor will 
not please everyone. The book lays down a clear challenge to much of the 
existing literature and it provides an important focal point for further 
debate. I am sure that it will become the totemic reference for this 
kind of thinking about the evolution of women’s work. For those with 
even a passing interest in gender history or in the industrial 
revolution, I thoroughly recommend it.


Timothy J. Hatton is Professor of Economics at the Australian National 
University and the University of Essex and is a Research Fellow of the 
CEPR (London) and the IZA (Bonn). His main interests are labor market 
history and international migration and his recent work includes _Global 
Migration and the World Economy_ (with Jeffrey G. Williamson), MIT 
Press, 2005.

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