Continuity & the Gender Wage Gap: Or, How Patriarchy Ruins Everything Part II

The 6 Cs of History: Continuity, Episode #3 of 4. Starting in the late 1990s, historians like Deborah Simonton and Judith Bennett argued that if we take a step back a look at the longue duree of women’s history, the evidence suggests that even as Europe’s economies transformed from market places to market economies, women’s work--and the value placed on gendered labor--was and continues to be remarkably (and frustratingly) consistent. There was not, in fact, a transformative moment ushered in by capitalism, industrialization, or post-industrialization for women. Even when factoring in race, urban/rural divides, and class, European (and American) women’s labor was always valued less than men’s, whether in the “household economies” or guilds of the medieval period, on the factory floors of the industrial era, or in the office cubicles of our more recent history. Today we’re going to take a step back and look at the longer history of the gender wage gap, where we can see the continuity in women’s work from the 14th century to the present. For show notes and a transcript, visit digpodcast.org

Select Bibliography

Judith Bennett, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

Deborah Simonton, A History of European Women’s Work:1700 to the Present (London, Routledge, 1998). 

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