Women's Work, Markets and Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

by Marjorie Griffin Cohen

Cohen focuses on the productive relations in the family and the significance of women's labour to the process of capital accumulation in both the capitalist sphere and independent commodity production.

Genres: History

258 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1988

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

In "Women's Work, Markets, and Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Ontario," economist Marjorie Griffen Cohen puts forth an argument around the specificity of regionalism and gender in examining labour history. Arguing that histories around industrialization in Canada have largely replicated findings from England and/or Europe around the impact of factory work and women's labour (mainly that women were pushed out of existing economies in the adaptation of market economies), Cohen uses women's work in Ontario in the nineteenth century to demonstrate the ways space plays into this transition. In examining the economy history of Ontario, Cohen demonstrates that the province's economy, which initially relied upon a staple production, was far weaker and limited at the start of industrialization, meaning women were largely removed from the craft economy and that the introduction of the factory system and wage labour allowed women more space in the Canadian economy. Tracing women's labour within the domestic sphere and ways they ensured household economies prior to industrialization in the second half of the nineteenth century, Cohen's monograph demonstrates the ways specificity around location, gender, and work shaped how individuals interacted with the market.