The Roles of Working Women

     Women played a huge role in industrialization. There were factories all over trying to hire women who needed work to support their families. Unfortunately, the women were treated like every other worker, and the conditions they were working in were not ideal.

     There were a few main reasons as to what motivated women to go to work in the Lowell mills such as wanting to help their families make more money, or to gain independence as a maturing woman. Girls would often ask permission from their fathers to go to the mills, they were never truly forced. Usually they decided on their own that they wanted to go out and get a job so they could have the sense of accomplishment that was making money to support themselves.

     Women in Lowell Massachusetts worked, on average, about 13 hours a day. They were paid very little, close to about three dollars and fifty cents per six day week. This was a huge drawback for girls working in the mills because they worked so hard and were barely able to send home pay to their families. They worked as spinners, warpers, weavers, dressers, and drawers in the factories, and the labor was difficult. It says in the article titled Labor in Lowell that; “…most workers had difficulty keeping up at first. But, with the help of more experienced women, they learned to run spinning throstles, and other complicated machinery.” This quote is a good example of what life in the factories was like for women because it shows how they helped each other out when necessary. That was also evident in the Lucy Hall video. When Lucy first went to work at the factory, an older woman named Harriet helped her out a lot and took Lucy under her wing and showed her how to work the machines. This was one of the benefits of the age ranges in the workspaces because new and younger girls were able to ask for assistance from older and more experienced women.

     There were few opportunities for working women in the 1800’s. But their attitudes were positive for the most part. Many women wanted to be sent to work and they wanted to make their own hard earned money. Regardless of the gender roles that may have been more distinct, there were some women who still believed in working in factories temporarily, and doing the physical labor that they had been doing all along. But there were other roles that opened up that were believed to be filled by women like staying home and being “…confined to the gentler world of home and family” , as stated in the article titled The Changing World of American Women.

     Women were thought to be lesser than men, but during the industrialization period, women really had a hand in the success of most factories. They proved that women could work just as hard as men, and it seems as though the gender inequality also played a large role in women’s motivation to work because they just wanted to be seen as just as good as everyone else.