Before the Industrial Revolution, men and women followed very traditional roles. The men worked on the farms, earning money for the families, while the women stayed at home and played a domestic role, taking care of the families. Due to the rise of factories, jobs based around agriculture were no longer in demand; therefore, families were losing their source of income and had to find a way to make money elsewhere. Men started working in factories, but were receiving extremely low wages and were not able to support their families. Due to this, women were forced to leave their position as a "housewife" and also take up work in the factories. Throughout the Industrial Revolution, the roles of men and women drastically changed from what they were like before, and ultimately helped the country to increasingly have more of an equal view of genders.
Life before the Industrial Revolution looked much different than it did after or even during it. Men and women had very distinct roles when it came to the family. In his book Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century, Walter Licht states, “Men generally raised crops and livestock, chopped wood, and fashioned tools and furniture, while women stored and prepared food, made and mended clothes, wove cloth, bore and reared children, tended gardens, and worked in the fields at planting and harvesting times (Licht, 3).” Women were defined by their household roles and had no legal identity apart from their husbands. The women, as well as their children, were financially dependent upon the man in the family. Their main role was to stay at home, bear and nurture the children, and cook and clean for the household. All of the work that was done would occur within the home. Meanwhile, the men would work on the farms, build furniture, etc. to earn money for their family.
Even though ideas about gender were very different before the industrialization period, these ideas greatly changed throughout the...