| Line | In current historiography, the picture of a consistent, |
| unequivocal decline in women’s status with the advent |
| of capitalism and industrialization is giving way to an |
| analysis that not only emphasizes both change (whether |
| (5) | improvement or decline) and continuity but also |
| accounts for geographical and occupational variation. |
| The history of women’s work in English farmhouse |
| cheese making between 1800 and 1930 is a case in |
| point. In her influential Women Workers and the Industrial |
| (10) | Revolution (1930), Pinchbeck argued that the agricultural |
| revolution of the eighteenth and early nineteenth |
| centuries, with its attendant specialization and enlarged |
| scale of operation, curtailed women’s participation in |
| the business of cheese production. Earlier, she |
| (15) | maintained, women had concerned themselves with |
| feeding cows, rearing calves, and even selling the |
| cheese in local markets and fairs. Pinchbeck thought |
| that the advent of specialization meant that women’s |
| work in cheese dairying was reduced simply to |
| (20) | processing the milk. “Dairymen” (a new social category) |
| raised and fed cows and sold the cheese through |
| factors, who were also men. With this narrowing of the |
| scope of work, Pinchbeck believed, women lost |
| business ability, independence, and initiative. |
| (25) | Though Pinchbeck portrayed precapitalist, |
| preindustrial conditions as superior to what followed, |
| recent scholarship has seriously questioned the notion |
| of a golden age for women in precapitalist society. For |
| example, scholars note that women’s control seldom |
| (30) | extended to the disposal of the proceeds of their |
| work. In the case of cheese, the rise of factors may |
| have compromised women’s ability to market cheese |
| at fairs. But merely selling the cheese did not |
| necessarily imply access to the money: Davidoff cites |
| (35) | the case of an Essex man who appropriated all but a |
| fraction of the money from his wife’s cheese sales. |
| By focusing on somewhat peripheral operations, |
| moreover, Pinchbeck missed a substantial element |
| of continuity in women’s participation: throughout the |
| (40) | period women did the central work of actually |
| making cheese. Their persistence in English cheese |
| dairying contrasts with women’s early disappearance |
| from arable agriculture in southeast England and |
| from American cheese dairying. Comparing these |
| (45) | three divergent developments yields some reasons |
| for the differences among them. English cheese- |
| making women worked in a setting in which cultural |
| values, agricultural conditions, and the nature of |
| their work combined to support their continued |
| (50) | participation. In the other cases, one or more of |
| these elements was lacking. |
