Frauenarbeit in Deutschland zwischen 1850 und 1933

The article deals with the historical development of women's labour force participation and their changing position in the labour market between 1850 and 1933. The arguments are drawn from an investigation of census data from Germany and a variety of contemporary as well as actual socio-economic literature on women's work discussed within the framework of assumptions proposed by theories of labour market segmentation. Moreover, it is emphasized that analyzing long-run changes of bourgeois and working-class women's housework and role patterns is a prerequisite for studying the historical development of women's paid work. In particular, the article tries to give answers to the following questions: (1) Was there a tendency of women's labour force participation to increase over the period under discussion? (2) How was the development of women's labour force participation allowing for distinctive social and martial status, connected with changes of women's role in general? (3) Does the discussion of sectoral changes in the structure of jobs reveal any sex-typed patterns? (4) Was there a tendency of sexual labour market segmentation to diminish regarding both the functional division of labour and the status of women's and men's work in the labour market? The first part of the article concentrates on questions one and two.