Introduction
The Industrial Revolution may be the most significant factor affecting Britain’s economy and society. Mechanization of production processes began during the industrial renaissance (Mitch, 2018). Until the 1840s, this movement, which originated in Britain in the 1760s, expanded over Western Europe and North America. Thanks to new advancements, workers can watch a machine manufacture a product instead of manufacturing it by hand. One could initially believe that the revolution impacted the factory floor. Up to the Scientific Revolution, women were mostly confined to the house. They were supposed to care for the house and the children while their husbands worked. However, the Industrial Revolution changed everything. The development of new technologies contributed to the formation of the women’s rights movement, which allowed more women to join the workforce. A significant contributor to this transformation was the rise in the need for labor in factories.
As a consequence of the Industrial Revolution, women’s social status changed. As more women entered the workforce, they began to feel the effects of discrimination and unequal treatment. They resisted and demanded equality by utilizing the suffrage movement.
Hypothesis and Null Hypothesis
The research questions will be formulated into the null hypothesis that the Industrial revolution had no impact on the women’s rights movement. On the other hand, the alternative hypothesis is that an industrial revolution impacts the women’s rights movement. If the reviewed reports and documents have substantial evidence agreeing that industrial revolutions had an impact on the women’s rights movement, this report will fail to reject the null hypothesis. However, if the reports reveal enough evidence that the Industrial revolution impacted the women’s rights movement, the null hypothesis will be rejected, and the alternative will be validated.
Study Premise and Rationale
The review will examine the available information to confirm that, indeed, the Industrial Revolution had an impact on the women’s rights association. In the evidence that this is true, the study will not accept the Null hypothesis. Alternatively, this review finds that the Industrial Revolution had no impact on the woman’s rights movement. In that case, the Null hypothesis will be accepted, and the alternative one will be rejected.
Statement of the Problem
It is argued that industrial revolutions impacted the women’s rights movement both positively and negatively. Before the industrial revolution, women were regularly given traditional jobs like making and repairing clothing. They regularly helped with running the farm and taking care of the kids. However, the customary position of women began to transform as the Industrial Revolution continued. For instance, the effects of the Agrarian Revolution and the Inclusion Program drove numerous smallholder companies off their properties. As an outcome, many individuals relocated from rural to urban regions, searching for employment in the newly developed mines and industries. Many women served in typically masculine occupations, including teaching, nursing, and working in difficult environments. These women endured great hardships at work.
For example, the fabric segment profited enormously from the various developments made in the period, and in the 19th and 18th centuries, many fabric mills were established throughout Britain. This meant that clothes became a manufactured product instead of a typically feminine function. The effects of the Industrial Revolution led to a significant increase in the number of women working in coal mines and textile factories. Women began to work as well to support their families. The low wages that working people received throughout the Industrial Era were commonplace.
As an effect, mothers and youngsters typically labored in industrial unit and mines to support their families’ everyday needs. In the workplace, women were frequently paid far less than males and were not given the same respect as men. For instance, whereas male industrial employees in Britain were frequently paid roughly 10 shillings per week, women only received half that amount. In addition to having a poor working environment, women often received low pay. Women worked as home helpers in the homes of the rich and in industries and excavations. For instance, women employed in mining frequently carried coal wagons up strip mines.
The labor was exhausting and risky since the lady would have to drag the wagon filled with charcoal through the confined area while it was fastened to her tummy by a rope. Workforces began to dissent and scuffle for equal opportunities at a similar time as women were seeking employment, and communist ideologies started to arise in the Industrialized Revolution. For instance, the labor movement was influenced by ideologies like Marxism and utopian communism. Women began to join in matrimony and stir for equal treatment in the social order all through this time, which resulted in the rise of the rapid suffragette movements. Feminism is the name given to the movement for transgender suffrage that sought gender equality.
During the Economic Revolution, historical feminist organizations fought for workplace equality, but first, they had to achieve equal voting rights. One of the first reasons women battled was the right to vote. In many of these industrialized nations, women were not allowed to vote throughout the 1800s; this started to alter in the 1900s as the government began to give women additional rights. Suffragettes were the women who fought for the suffrage movement or the push for women to have equal voting rights. This paper will thus discuss how the Industrial Revolution affected the Women’s Suffrage Movement, which gave women new opportunities and a bigger voice in society.
Significance of the Review
This review is significant because it will increase the body of existing literature and attempt to close the knowledge gap about how the Scientific Revolution affected the Women’s Rights Movement, most notably the suffrage movement. It will provide fresh perspectives on what industrialization benefited the movement for women’s rights and where the issues were.
Concepts and Variable
A conceptual framework, a textual or visual representation of a predicted connection between correlations, summarizes the ideas in this study. It clarifies the focus of the study and grounds it solidly in theoretical frameworks. Additionally, the research design supports the generalizability of the study outcomes and gives them significance. In this analysis, the effects of the industrial revolution are the independent variables, while one dependent parameter, the Women’s Rights Movement, demonstrates the principles.
Literature Review
Women and the Early Industrial Revolution
The entrance of power-driven equipment into the Scottish and English industrial applications in the latter part of the nineteenth millennium served as the impetus for Industrialization, which reshaped western U.S. over the century. But throughout that transition, much more than the raw cotton sector changed (Lim et al., 2019). Urban regions expanded, non-industrial and non-industrial wage labor rose, and in agricultural communities, outwork vocations and agricultural production changed the rural job market. Last but not least, these economic trends occurred simultaneously as significant patterns of family daily existence, specifically a decline in household size and an increase in life duration (Lucas-Dubreton, 2019). One of the unforeseen outcomes of technical advancement in the nineteenth-century USA was undoubtedly a larger role for ladies in the workforce, modern politics, and the evolution process.
The transatlantic flow of British migrants and British innovation, such as the introduction of the spinning wheel, waterwheels, and spinning donkey that enabled the cotton industry, was crucial to the American manufacturing revolution’s success. Following the American industrial transition, Britain sent a huge amount of goods to the country, which sparked a drive to copy the innovations that provided English companies a competitive edge in American business. Their efforts in Smithfield, Rhode Islands, resulted in the first American stationary spinning and weaving factory. Following British customs, these clothing manufacturers in southern Old England hired whole families, with youngsters making up the bulk of the mill labor. The finishing of the cloth was left to both countryside and urban hand spinners, while the factories concentrated on scoring and spinning. As a result, the early cotton garment factories were an integral part of the agricultural environment of the area.
However, the prosperity of these initial manufacturers led to the emergence of new rivals, and the other industries aided in the development of eastern New England. The latest fabric acquisition influx preceded the renowned economic espionage act by Massachusetts businessman Francis Cabot Boston. After visiting factories in Old Britain, Lowell started working to recreate the cotton mill he had observed. By 1814, he had achieved success, and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he founded the Boston Production Plant armed with a certificate of an organization from the national government. Between 1815 and 1860, the Waltham-Lowell program’s garment factories sprouted up all over the southern New England region and continued to expand during the next quarter of the century. The prior regional disparities gradually vanished when Rhode Island-style mills grew as well. By the middle of the 20th century, 85,000 people worked in New England’s fabric industry, which produced clothing worth $78 million a year. The state largest’s largest industrial employment at this time was cotton and merino textile mills, which also included a sizable textile sector in the Philadelphia region.
Power-driven machines made it possible to vertically integrate every phase of the fabric production operation under one roof. All stages of production—from breaking open the bundles through carding, twisting, treating the warping yarn, and ultimately sewing the fabric—were carried out inside the mill. The upshot of this change was a shift in the employees as well. Because the computerized loom and the clothes frame needed relatively tall staff, children would not work as usual in Northern New England. Consequently, the Waltham Company depended on a team of young, single women employed from the beginning. The business had to hire women from a much more isolated part of the rural and construct boarding homes for them to stay in. Finally, to draw in this newfound pool of workers, companies give monthly cash compensation, a clear competitive edge over the methods used in the family-run Rhode Island factories.
Women continued to be vital to this expanding industry’s workforce between 1825 and 1870. To get qualified young females to work in their mills, factory supervisors hired marketers to travel throughout northern New Hampshire. The pay, normally fixed at $3 to $3.50 weekly, was far greater than what farm girls could make in their home cities and was a big draw (Fleche et al., 2018). It is evident from examining the financial circumstances of the machine women’s parents and their letters that work in the industry allowed young women to sustain themselves independently of their households. Daughters left their rural families and took jobs in mills for various reasons. In reality, there was a spectrum spanning between those who went to the processing plants for private purposes and those who went to work to provide for their households financially. The movement was more driven by long-term financial reasons than by short-term issues of urgent self-support, especially how to save for a wedding. Women come from rural households that could afford a basic level of life. Therefore, more than poverty, a lack of prospective job prospects drove teenage women into the factories.
Along with the monetary implications of the growth of industrial participation, female employment in the mills and factories led to significant cultural shifts. People have expressed concern that industries are creating irreconcilable young females with the standards of 1900s femininity in various ways across history. Some believed that farmers’ daughters who worked in textiles had become citified and were not suited for marriage. According to them, teenage girls’ experiences in the town factories left them dissatisfied with the countryside lifestyle of their families. Because of this, a writer bemoaned that younger working women no longer sought a traditional life in 1858. Only around a quarter of milling factory women who wedded men who worked as landowners or agricultural workers spent the remainder of their lives there, according to a study that followed a sample of them throughout their lifespan. Many countryside women who worked in mills got married to artisan husbands or other urban laborers and moved away from their childhood farms to New Britain’s expanding towns. When young people cast their ballots with their toes, their elders disapproved.
Some landowners’ daughters who worked in mills also became active in the colonial social reforms movements such as women’s suffrage. In the 1825s and 1850s, workers were struck in Boston and other milling communities in Great Britain (Natsagdorj, 2021). The ladies who participated in these conflicts were engaged in various reform movements. The 10 Hours Revolution, which sought to reduce the number of hours workers put in at the factories, emerged in the 1850s, marking the climax of labor unrest in New England steel plants before the Civil Rebellion. Around this time, the manufacturing factories operated an average of more than 12 hours each day for 73 hours each week.
Factory workers began to request a ten-hour workweek as the speed of labor in the factories rose with no pay increases, allowing them more time to unwind, hold conferences and seminars, and engage in the urban creative environment surrounding them. These demonstrations, which were based on past protests and referred to as “rollouts” in the day, tell a lot about the awareness that England ladies brought to the textile mill experiences (Keane & McKeown, 2018). Women established the Boston Factory Girls Organization in November 1836 to coordinate their protests on the anniversary of the second walkout in Lowell. The prologue to the institution’s charter demonstrates mill feminists’ identification with the state structure of the developing country and their feeling of themselves as “children of freemen.” Around 2,400 factory women quit their workplaces, protesting rising costs at corporate boardinghouses without a matching rise in their income. The women resisted the factory representatives for numerous months while displaying good tactical awareness. The mill women eventually returned to work when the corporations decreased boardinghouse fees for some of its employees.
Women established the Massachusetts Female Welfare Reform Organization a decade later to limit the hours worked. The organization maintained itself for 2.5 years and ran campaign drives urging the state government to adopt a legal maximum of 10 hours for the business day. Labor men and ladies in 19th century USA leaned primarily on conservatism from the democratic past and asceticism from evangelical Protestants to oppose the new demands of corporate capitalism.
These customs also inspired factory women to join several other reformation initiatives. There was a powerful anti-slavery movement in Lowell. The women wrote multiple papers against enslavement in the Department of Washington and the conflict with Mexico, which would have helped servitude spread into the Southwestern parts. Ultimately, female reformers connected the fight against wage and African indentured servitude. Some also took part in the proliferation of women suffrage conferences that followed the first one, which took place at Niagara Falls, NY in August 1849. In September 1851, Mary Emerson, a key figure in Lowell’s 10-hour work campaign, went to a conference for female issues in Gloucester, Massachusetts. She participated in the broadening viewpoints of American ladies in governance and societal change in the 19th century by sharing the broad reform viewpoint that spurred female mill workers to engage in labor protests during these two decades.
The memories of mill women demonstrate that laboring in industries permitted women to do domestic work beyond the home and provided them a common viewpoint that inspired them to join larger social revolution movements. In Lowell, women were involved in campaigns for equal rights for women, better working conditions, moral reform, compassion, and anti-slavery. Toiling individuals in this age first maintained their rights and advantages by citing political traditions. Still, over time they came to justify their need for societal fairness on the grounds of a blend of religious and intellectual concepts. They came together to express their outrage at the growing inequality they perceived in American society and to demand greater rights and privileges for women and workers.
Women’s Roles in the Industrial Revolution
The achievements that women contributed to the commercialization of England are crucial for today’s metropolis. Women who considered the need to exert a financial impact on their lives during the Manufacturing Revolution came to the municipalities in quest of jobs (Seifi, 2021). Most of these women were successful in finding work in the fabric industry, manual labor companies, and household positions. In reality, they worked in the coal industry. Women saw the necessity of looking for work because the revolution offered prospects for individual earnings. Women had the opportunity to improve their standard of living and that of their homes by traveling to other places.
The hiring of females and youngsters in factories throughout the economic revolution had some detrimental effects, even though one could argue that it improved the standing of women in the community. Women’s reading levels declined as a result of the hazardous and unhygienic working circumstances; they also suffered from a lack of study hours (Delmez & Vandenberghe, 2018). The dual responsibility of doing household duties and working in industries was another issue that women had to deal with. Additionally, women were paid less than males and would not have the same development opportunities. The views of society on the destiny of women were also impacted by women laboring in remote locations without parental supervision. Family members also increasingly depended on women’s salaries due to the increased demand for wages to support families, subjecting them to exploitation by manufacturers.
In several factories, women predominated due to their mentality and productivity; many factory owners favored hiring women as their labor. Women produced more output and performed faster, yet they were paid half as much as males. Women proceeded to labor long shifts in industries despite the stress, low pay, and unhygienic conditions of employment. Even before Industrialization, women were working. Only in this particular case did they have a job away from home. Nevertheless, the increase in female workers in these industries didn’t impact how ladies worked.
The majority of these women employees worked in the household sector. Most women handled such activities; in certain cases, engaged women also did. On the other hand, attached women cared for their homes while working in the industries (Sutton, 2020). On the contrary, technological development allowed women to work for themselves. These offered women who occasionally gave their family a portion of their wages a sense of autonomy. Before the Industrial transition, a group of men, females, and kids worked together. Home-based businesses made it difficult to distinguish between personal and professional life.
Nevertheless, these responsibilities shifted when the economic revolution got underway. Today, industries employed women, girls, and kids. Collectively, they performed strenuous tasks over an extended time in hazardous locations. Due to the long workdays, there needed to be more time for household contacts. These caused understanding of the employment circumstances for women and kids to increase. These finally prompted the administration to create regulations and laws.
Women’s Suffrage during the Industrial Revolution
Soon after the War Of independence, Susan B. Antony, a staunch and outspoken advocate for women’s rights, asked that the Federal Constitution include a guarantee of the right to participate in voting for both women and African-American men. 1870 saw the founding of the American Woman Liberation Association by Cady Stanton Anthony (Cady Stanton, 2020). Later that year, Lucy Stones, Hall Julia Howe, and others founded the American Women’s Suffrage Movement (Jenkins, 2020). It took until 1920 for the 19th Amendment to become a law, granting women the right to vote (Rowbottom, 2020). Over the mid-1800s and early 1950s, women and women’s unions battled for social changes, overall administrative and monetary fairness, and the freedom to participate state legal matters. Between 1880 and 1915, the number of employed women in the Uk increased from 2.7 million to 7.7 million.
Even though ladies began working in business and innovation, men held most of the greater positions. Around 70% of all skilled women were home employees at the start of the period. Being able to choose their salary, own property, and maintain parental responsibilities in the case of separation are examples of how women have advanced in civilization.
By 1897, four areas had permitted women to cast ballots. Women and women’s groups supported several macroeconomic and reform-related issues (Delmez & Vandenberghe, 2018). At the start of the new century, female clubs across the nation worked to promote topics including suffrage, better schooling, the management of child laborers, women in cooperatives, and alcohol regulation (Myers & Parker, 2018). Women who believed in traditional gender roles declared that women shouldn’t run for office. Others claimed that taking part may cause certain ladies to “grow whiskers.” The plurality of men felt scared by the campaign for revolutionary, economic, and legal equality. Still, some women felt just as scared by its threat to their traditional roles.
Importance and Relevant of this Study to the Research
Concentrating on the changes that have taken place throughout the founding of businesses is the goal of researching how the industrial transition has affected female roles in the community. It wasn’t easy compared to when ladies held major roles in the community. It required bravery for the ladies to leave their homes and try different things, mostly for men. They were shown by their encounters how much skill they have (Steele & Whitaker, 2019). They no longer have to worry about the man intimidating them into taking the spots. These encounters also showed the males the importance of being careful since the unification of women may significantly influence social structure (Hildingsson, 2018). Women might not have reached their full capacity if it were not for the economic transformation. This is an important time in history because it shows how far ladies have progressed. The time when women came together to speak out against the oppression of themselves and their youngsters was when the existing labor regulations first emerged. This study helps to explore Industrial Revolution and how it impacted women’s lives and rights.
Methodology
The data included in the study’s results were gathered via secondary data-gathering techniques. Using this strategy, the researcher can use information gathered and easily accessible from other sources. Secondary data can also be acquired quickly and for less money than primary information. It entailed reprocessing data in this instance, making it secondary information for this research.
Data Collection
Two methods for gathering data were used: document analysis and content analysis. First, systematic patterns in the data that were easily accessible were found in academic journals, web pages, and online publications. Data was then organized, processed, and analyzed based on the themes and concepts found in the texts. Acknowledging concepts’ semantic relationships and meaning was necessary for the analysis to discover correlations and trends in how concepts were expressed. This followed a systematic process that was precise and highly reliable.
Document analysis uses organized processes to examine documentary material and respond to certain research questions. To comprehend the meaning and practical information of the parameters being investigated, the primary data that were accessible were evaluated, examined, and evaluated. Contextualizing the results from the two sources of data was achieved as an additional component of the content evaluation. Triangulation made it possible to confirm, clarify, and elaborate on the information from all sources to ensure accuracy and prevent biased outcomes. It contributed to improving the validity of research findings and ensuring the reliability and correctness of the findings. Additionally, the research methodology made sure that the study chose the right bits of data from all the sources by recommending scenarios for the research to look into and providing extra beneficial insights.
Steps and Procedures
The material was grouped by identifying the units of meaning—the components the researchers searched for in the secondary information of all the papers were identified. The information was then coded into thematic for simple analysis when this was accomplished. All the references were then copied to enable annotation of the data without tampering with the primary information. The source materials’ reliability, dependability, ease of integration, and transferability were then verified. The following phase entailed examining the inconsistencies in the data to get rid of inaccurate information and ensure correct information. The proof was then assessed by looking for significant patterns, extracting pertinent information, and determining how it related to the study question. The findings were then interpreted to create the final argument.
Results
The findings illustrated the suffrage movement’s social, economic, and political ramifications during the Scientific Revolution.
Effects of the suffrage campaign for women
As an outcome of the Technological Revolution, women’s social status changed. As more women entered the workforce, they began to feel the effects of discrimination and inequity. They resisted and demanded equality by utilizing the suffrage movement. The women’s suffrage movement significantly impacted the culture. The organization contributed to a change in how society saw and handled women. It also helped to increase the opportunities available to women in public. The movement’s greatest success was adopting the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. Later decades of women found it simpler to battle for their liberties due to this action, which helped shift the power distribution in the societal structure.
Economic Effects of the Suffrage Movement during the Industrial revolution
The movement for women’s suffrage greatly influenced the economy, labor force, and home life in the late nineteenth century. The movement contributed to a change in how society saw and regarded women. It also helped to increase the opportunities available to women in society. The movement’s greatest success was the adoption of the nineteenth Adjustment, which granted women the freedom to elect leaders. Later decades of women found it simpler to advocate for their rights due to this action, which helped shift the power distribution in society. The Women’s Rights Movement increased the number of industrial roles for women in society. With more academic options at their disposal, more and more women are discovering their aptitude for successful professional careers. However, not as much as men’s, women’s salaries increased as well. Despite this, it was nevertheless a significant advancement for women because of how different it was from the past.
Social Effects of the Suffrage Movement during the Industrial revolution
The Women’s Suffrage Movement significantly altered how women were perceived and treated in the community. It also helped to increase the opportunities available to women in public. The campaign’s greatest success was adopting the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. Later generations of women found it simpler to battle for their rights due to this action, which helped shift the distribution of power in society. The Suffrage Movement for Women greatly impacted the economy, labor force, and home life in the 19th century. Because of the fight for suffrage, women today have high ambitions. Women could attend college and seek jobs in the early 20th century, albeit in different numbers than men. They began working in traditionally male-dominated fields, including business, law, and medicine. Women also founded various organizational setups. Thanks to the Women’s Suffrage movement, women were enabled to secure their place in society and take a step toward complete equality among Americans.
The first everlasting suffrage bill in American history, Wyoming’s territory assembly gave women the vote in 1869, setting off a firestorm of opposition to granting them the ability to vote. Several states had introduced voting by the 1890s. By 1913, there were 12 states, and Alice Paul, the frontrunner of the National Woman’s Party, decided to use the number of votes of the women in those nations to pass a suffrage motion in Congress. Women had to endorse the nation’s participation in World War I; this gave the suffragists their ultimate firepower.
Political Effects of the Suffrage Movement during the Industrial revolution
A woman suffrage resolution was put up in the House of Congress when the United States joined the war in 1917. Both chambers had approved it of Congress by 1919, and the required 36 states quickly approved it. When the 19th Amendment, often known as the Susan B. Anthony Constitutional provision, was conceded into rule in August 1920, American women lastly received fairness (Johnson, 2022). The right of US citizens to the secret ballot must not be deprived of or restricted by the United States or any other State based on gender, according to the Nineteenth Edition of the U.S. Charter (Johnson, 2022). By passing the necessary laws, Parliament can implement this manuscript.
Conclusion
In summary, women’s survival was significantly compressed by the Industrial Uprising. They witnessed a substantial change in their place in public, and many began working to assist their relatives. Once during work, they came across prejudice and discriminating handling. The earliest feminist movements developed as a result and demanded equality, predominantly regarding females voting rights. The feminist ideology is still active today as women battle for rights such as childbearing dispensation and equitable pay. It was a significant social and economic transformation during the Industrial Revolution. New class distinctions and emerging technology both emerged during this time. The greater presence of women in the profession was one of the biggest shifts.
The economy, labor force, and home life in the 19th century were all significantly impacted by this development. In the late nineteenth century, the Suffrage Movement for Women greatly impacted the economy, labor force, and family obligations. The movement contributed to a change in how society saw and treated women. It also aided in giving women in the public arena greater opportunities. The 19th Amendment, which gave women the privilege to vote, was the revolution’s most important outcome. The power structures in society were influenced by this transition, which also made it easier for later generations of women to strive for equality.
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