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    The Employment of Women - The employment of women continues to increase, but to nothing like, the extent that is generally supposed - in fact, it is only very slightly greater than the normal increase of the population. The current view that women are replacing men to a considerable extent in industry is much in want of confirmation. As was ably pointed out in the Parliamentary Report a couple of years ago, two main causes of error have affected the popular opinion on the subject. In the first place, it has been assumed too hastily that recent tendencies towards the greater employment of middle-class women are representative of a general change in all departments. But this is not the case. The industrial position of women varies with the degree of prosperity of the men in the class to which they belong. The wives and daughters of men of small producing and earning power have at all times been obliged to go out to work. As the man's earning power increases it becomes possible for the family to be supported by his earnings, and the greater comfort thus obtained in the home creates a general feeling that the wife, at least, should not work for wages; with increasing prosperity and a rising standard of comfort the services of the daughters can also be retained. In England during the last hundred years the great increase in productive power through the introduction of machinery has largely increased the number of men able to support their daughters, while the need for their services at home has decreased. In the middle class, a high standard of comfort, a smaller field for domestic usefulness, a diminished chance of getting married, and apprehension with regard to the future have combined to encourage the entrance into the labour market of middle-class girls. At the same time a compensating movement has been going on among the less prosperous classes, by whom the benefit to the family obtainable by the women devoting themselves to housework is being gradually recognised. Thus it comes about that on the whole the employment of married women is decreasing, and the slight increase in the employment of the unmarried is due to the increasing number of girls under twenty-five years of age in the lighter occupations. It is not in the factories that women are increasing, but in the offices, and that to only a trifling extent when we take the country as a whole.

article in The Leisure Hour, 1896