Hello again, taloola69-ga!
Thank you so much for requesting my research again, and for you kind
patience while I compiled this answer!
I have found some excellent information about the lives of women in
Scotland during the past two centuries. I hope you find the
information as fascinating as I did. You might want to read though the
excerpts first, and then go back and read the references in full!
LIFE FOR SCOTTISH WOMEN IN THE NINETEENTH and TWENTIETH CENTURIES
=================================================================
Life in the rural communities of eighteenth-century Scotland was
difficult for women. The book, "Walking Through Scotland's History"
provides a glimpse into the physically-demanding lives of Scottish
women involved in the fishing and farming industries.
"Scottish fisherfolk were often cut off socially from the rest of the
country which could begin at their garden dyke. Womenfolk never went
to sea, but their shore lives were hard, even after they had carried
their menfolk to the boats to prevent them getting their clothes wet!
(Not as sexist as it seems; men would have little chance of drying
their clothes once at sea.). Collieston fishwives near Aberdeen walked
three miles and back to the Ythan estuary, and then far out at low
tide to the mussel scaups to collect fresh bait, several times a week.
Once the fish was unloaded, it fell to the fishwives to sell it. From
the east-coast fishing ports until the early part of the last century,
women would walk carrying creels, often weighing a hundredweight, up
to 30 miles a day to their markets, selling the fish or bartering them
for meal and eggs."
"The fishwives of the North-East coastal ports of Inveralochy,
Cairnbulg and Broadsea had things well-organised. Christian Watt was
born in 1833 and later recalled how she went with her mother to the
'inland country every year with cured fish in the 1840s and 50s, even
selling to the Royal Family at Balmoral. They organised a carter to
transport 10 tons of fish to a bothy at Corrybeg on upper Deeside,
where they lived in primitive conditions, and to which they walked.
There they stayed for several weeks, scouring the Grampians around on
foot with their creels; Christine recalled that on occasion they would
have problems as local stalking estates tried to block their progress
through the glens. Fishwives were fearsome creatures, vituperative and
given to swearing; but every account states their morality was
impeccable, and many were religious revivalists. Gradually the walking
fishwife disappeared. Scotland's last working fishwife, Betty Millar
of Musselburgh, died in 2000. Though she still wore traditional
fishwives garb, her journeys to the Border towns where she sold her
fish were done by train."
...
"Farming, especially at harvest time, could not do without migrant
workers, and many of these came surprisingly large distances to and
from their employment on foot. Large numbers came from the
impoverished Highlands to the hairst......A minister fulminated in
1827 about the roads of Argyll being occupied by scores of Highland
women returning from the hairst, after spending their wages on
fripperies and finery, and having been away from restraining moral
influences (of males) the while. That for the girls it was a holiday
as well as necessary work is shown by the fact that larger groups
often took a piper with them, to play on the road, or while they were
at work. There was strength in numbers, and often groups of 30, 40 or
50, known to each other, would sign up for the hairst, and live
together in communal bothies while they laboured. Female labour was
favoured as well into the nineteenth century the harvesting implement
was the light-toothed sickle, which women could wield, and their
bending ability enabled them to cut the grain to the root."
"The Lothian hairst attracted labour from Argyll, but also from very
far afield. A commentator in Wester Ross in 1844 noted of the local
girls that 'Many went for the harvest. Some as far as the Lothians.
There 46% of the labour force in agriculture was female, higher than
elsewhere in Scotland. In the 1880s the Napier Commission on Crofting
noted that there was no abatement in this tradition of seasonal
migration, 'Many young women went to the Lothians. It is sheer
necessity that compels them to go. While it seems that going to the
herring was a long-term pursuit, with many married women involved, the
shearers in the Lothians appear to have been mainly in their mid to
late teens."
A Chapter excerpt from "Walking through Scotland's history," by Ian Mitchell.
http://www.glasgowwestend.co.uk/out/outdoors/ianmitchell/walkinghistory.html
==
Deborah A. Symonds provides a view of life in seventeenth through
nineteenth century Scotland in her book, "Women, Ballads, and
Infanticide in Early Modern Scotland,"
An excerpt from a review follows:
"Symonds' subtle and finely articulated analysis allows her readers to
see in the minutiae the complexity of life in early modern Scotland,
where, for example, population growth and improvements in agricultural
production were met with an upswing in infanticide. Pressed by local
poverty and dowry-dependent marriages, the life of the rural Scots
woman was not too far from that of the ballad heroine. For, as
subsistence and tenant farming gave way to larger land holdings, rural
women's lives were increasingly solitary affairs. Living in
relentlessly cruel circumstances that gave her physical as well as
mental stamina, the ballad heroine "uses desire to find value in men
who appear ordinary, which must have been something of a radical
proposition" (51). As few men could promise marriage and few women
would find options outside marriage, her sexual independence had to
exist in an uneasy tension with her desire to marry. The resultant
unwanted pregnancies had to be disguised, and the children who were
born in secret died, often quite brutally. The women who stayed on in
the countryside, hoping for a productive rural life were the ones most
likely to appear in court facing infanticide charges, where
prosecution was especially high among single women. Increasingly,
women were expected to bear witness against women, for only women knew
the intimacies of childbearing and the physical signs that accompanied
the birth and loss of a child. Mother/wives acted as forensics
experts, detailing the marks of delivery and the possible ways a child
might appear to have died unnaturally. In most of the proceedings, the
suspect's body became public evidence against herself. Acquittal
depended solely upon the advocacy of male members of the community."
From "Deborah A. Symonds. Weep Not for Me: Women, Ballads, and
Infanticide in Early Modern Scotland. (1997) A review by Gaye
McCollum.
http://rmmla.wsu.edu/ereview/52.2/book_reviews/mccollum.asp
Skye and Kilmarock
-------------------
A few bits of information about women in the nineteenth century
communities of Skye and Kilmarock can be found in a 2003 paper on
Scottish Demography. The paper compares the demographics of the rural
crofting community of Skye to the more urban Kilmarock.
"In the late nineteenth century, the majority of the population of
Skye lived an almost peasant-like existence, relying on crofting and
fishing for their livelihood and renting their land and homes from the
estates of the local landowners or ?lairds?"
"Marriage was late, and fertility within marriage was high, with
relatively few offspring being lost during infancy."
"While there were a number of towns which fitted the bill in terms of
size and occupational structure, Kilmarnock was the only one which
remained geographically distinct throughout the nineteenth century. As
an example it provides a good comparator for Skye, having a mixed
economy,
* a substantial female labour force (28% of the workforce in 1871) * ....
From "Nineteenth Century Scottish Demography from Linked Censuses and
Civil Registers." http://www.nappdata.org/imagpapers/davies_garrett_reid.pdf
Home and family in the early 1900's
====================================
"Given the size of families and female life expectancy (at birth) of
44 years in the mid-Victorian period few women would have experienced
life without dependent children under the age of 12 within the home.
Indeed, upwards of a half of the total duration of women's lives were
taken up in producing, nursing and nurturing children."
"Furthermore, Victorian notions of the sexual division of labour
dictated that child rearing and household tasks were unequivocally
defined as 'women's work'. Oral testimony in Scotland (e.g Stirling
and L. Jamieson) clearly indicates that daughters were expected to
contribute help with household chores and child-minding very early on
in life, whilst sons and fathers were exempt from all but a few
specialised tasks, such as decorating and shoe repair. For daughters,
housework invariably continued even after entering full-time
employment. All this was bound up with deeply entrenched notions of
masculinity and femininity, and a prevailing misogynist culture in the
Victorian and Edwardian period."
"Moreover, the labour intensivity of domestic work in the late
Victorian period should be emphasised. The work of a married woman
within the home included a wide range of physically gruelling tasks,
performed seven days a week: nursing, caring, feeding and minding
children; washing and ironing laundry; frequent shopping; food
preparation, cooking and washing-up; scrubbing, sweeping, polishing
and blackleading the house, the stair, the yard and the household
equipment and utensils (such as the iron and chrome kitchen range);
sewing, knitting, making and mending clothes; as well as
responsibility for financial budgeting and management."
"Most of this was done by hand, without the aid of any sophisticated
equipment, and hence was extremely debilitating hard physical graft.
Washing in itself, often undertaken in the communal tenement washroom,
could take more than a full day. Once married there was little relief
for working class women from the drudgery of such domestic toil."
From "Women and gender relations in Scotland." (Wordpad document)
http://www.strath.ac.uk/Departments/Histor...civor/w7_l1.doc
==
Before World War I, very few women worked outside of the home. Most
of these jobs were confined to teaching, nursing and childcare and
were not deemed worthy of importance in the male-dominated society.
"Industrial Scotland, centred on Clydeside shipbuilding and
engineering, was extremely male orientated and for a woman to enter
such work was unthinkable before the war. Also, the birth rate amongst
working class women was considerably higher than amongst the middle
classes. It was quite common for women in the pre-war slums of Glasgow
to be cooking and cleaning for ten children, without any labour saving
devices, whilst working part-time to supplement the male wage. Again
none of this was really considered to be work, especially if you were
married because 'true labour' was considered the male domain. A 1911
census showed that only 1 in 20 employed women in Scotland were
married, and although this demonstrates attitudes to working women and
their place in the family, the census undoubtedly missed the vast
amount of part-time work done by working class women, which was often
cleaning, cooking or childcare for the wealthy, and was mainly off the
books. The exception to this was in Dundee where the Jute Mills
employed mainly married women, and unemployed women were regarded as
lazy, whether married or not."
From "20th Century Scottish Women - Changing Roles." BBCI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/scottishhistory/modern/features_modern_women.shtml
The Emergence of Women's Groups
===============================
"The emerging suffrage movement of the late nineteenth century did not
merely demand the vote for women. It demanded that women be treated as
equals. Why should women spend their days behind a stove with no one
to speak to whilst their husbands lingered around the local water
fountain or pub? So, from the late nineteenth century a number of
women's groups emerged in Scotland. They included the Scottish
Co-operative Women's Guilds and the Townswomen's Guild but the SWRI
has proven to be the most popular
"By 1917 Catherine Blair was fully aware that women were tied to their
homes and families with few, if any, social outlets. Then, inspired by
her dairymaid, who complained that, "[Men] are aye meetin' their
neebors in the stable an' passin' the time o' day wi' the maister ...
but for the likes o' me, there's never a body to speak to," she
decided that this problem needed to be remedied."
From "The Scottish Women's Rural Institute." Historyshelf.org
http://sites.scran.ac.uk/shelf/learn/13.php
The Right to Vote
===================
While the early suffrage movement centered primarily on the voting
rights of middle class women, the first World War prompted more
widespread political activity within the female population. Women
finally gained equal voting rights in the late 1920's.
"However, the suffrage movement at this time was mainly preoccupied
with the plight of middle class women and, in general, did not
advocate universal suffrage - the vote was to be allocated on the
basis of property held, and this excluded not only most women but most
men in Scotland as well. The war had the effect of democratising the
movement in that more working class women became politically active.
In 1918 women over the age of 30 got the vote and ten years later
equal voting rights with men was achieved."
"In 1918 women over the age of 30 got the vote and ten years later
equal voting rights with men was achieved."
From "20th Century Scottish Women - Changing Roles (II)." BBCI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/scottishhistory/modern/features_modern_women2.shtml
The Emergence of Women in the Work Force
==========================================
Declining birth rates, partly due to education and the availability of
birth control, gradually allowed women greater access to the urban
workforce. Marie Stopes, a Scottish-born vocal advocate for birth
control, wrote several books concerning women's issues and founded the
first British birth-control clinic in 1921.
"Between the late 1870s and early 1930s birth rates halved and this
had obvious effects on women's ability to pursue careers. The most
important influence in this social trend was education and awareness
of birth control. Perhaps the most famous and controversial advocate
of birth control was Edinburgh-born Marie Stopes, who founded the
first Birth Control Clinic in Britain."
=
World War II saw an increase in jobs for both sexes, and women slowly
began to rise up the ladder in terms of pay. In some highly-skilled
jobs, the rate of pay for women equaled that of their male cohorts.
"During the Second World War there was again a marked increase in the
amount of women in the labour market. For example, the Rolls-Royce
factory at Hillington near Glasgow employed 10,000 women in the
production of spitfire engines. Women were now employed in highly
skilled engineering jobs, which before the war would have been
unthinkable. In 1940, this new position for women was officially
recognised when engineering firms were allowed to pay female employees
the the same wage as skilled male labourers. This was a historic
achievement in the history of female labour and women were prepared to
fight for their new rights, as was shown at the Hillington Factory
when a strike was called over the Rolls-Royce management's efforts to
withhold equal pay. All this didn't mean equal pay for women across
the economy, but after the Second World War more women kept their jobs
compared to the First World War and the sustained post-war economic
boom helped this new position. The economic boom of the 1950s combined
with the creation of the Welfare State increased the lot of women
massively, especially amongst the working classes. State benefits in
childcare, housing and health vastly increased the standard of living
for everyone, and made it easier for women with families to enter into
employment.
=
The 1960's saw the entrance of "married" women into the workforce!
This new positioning of women represented a significant cultural
change, elevating women to a different position in Scottish society.
In fact, women replaced men as the dominant force in the workplace,
even if many of the positions were part-time and for less pay.
"By the swinging 60's most women in the workplace were married, and
this demonstrates the huge change in attitudes which had taken place
since the First World War when working married women and working
mothers were frowned upon, or even pitied. The domestic revolution in
labour-saving devices encouraged this new development, as did advances
in contraception and the continuing trend for smaller families. Also
the economy was starting move away from male-dominated heavy industry
towards more light manufacturing, clerical, secretarial and service
sector work. Scotland may have been troubled by a reluctance to bury
its industrial past, but whilst many men stood in dole queues in the
1970s, Scottish women were increasingly employed in these new
industries. By the 1990s, as Scotland headed towards the millennium,
women became the majority of the Scottish workforce. Much of this work
was still on a part-time basis and the female wage was still lower on
average than the male wage, but this rate of change in such a short
period of time is truly staggering."
From "20th Century Scottish Women - Changing Roles (II)." BBCI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/scottishhistory/modern/features_modern_women2.shtml
LIFE FOR WOMEN IN SCOTLAND TODAY
=================================
Engender, an information, research and networking organisation for
women in Scotland, has compiled an excellent picture of the status of
women in Scotland today. Their "gender audit" provides information on
Population, Health and care, Households and housing, Education,
Childcare, Employment, Income and wealth, Crime and justice, Transport
and lifestyles, Lesbians, Business and Black and ethnic minority
women.
Employment
==========
"There has been little appreciable change in the general
characteristics of women's work in Scotland since the first Gender
Audit in 1993 gave a summary of the position of women in the labour
market. Women workers are concentrated in a relatively small number of
areas of the Scottish economy, in particular the service sector; and
are concentrated in lower occupational grades than men. The gender gap
in earnings persists. Latest figures indicate the following features
of women's work":
* Despite equal pay legislation, women in Scotland earn 73% of men's* average
weekly earnings and 78% of men's average hourly earnings.
* Women workers are concentrated in a relatively small number of areas of the
economy - shops, hotels, restaurants, financial and business services,
education, health and social work.
* 56% of working women in Scotland work full-time, and 44% work part-time.
* Almost half of all full-time women workers in Scotland are low paid.
* Around a third of women with disabilities are economically active compared
with around three quarters of non disabled women.
* Employment rates for lone parents are lower than for parents in couples. In
Spring 2000, 54% and 51% of male and female lone parents respectively were
employed, compared to 89% and 74% of male and female parents in couples.
* Analysis of employment rates for 1998-99, showed that 32% of women from
ethnic minorities were in employment compared to 68% of white women.
* In Spring 2000, nearly half of the workforce were women. However, while 91%
of employed men worked full-time, only 55% of employed women worked full-
time.
* In 1999, 24% of female full-time employees are employed on a flexible time
working pattern compared to 16% of male employees.
* In 2000, only one quarter of Chairs of Public Bodies in Scotland were
female.
From "Putting Women in the Picture - Overview of the position of women
in Scottish society." Egender.
http://www.engender.org.uk/overview.html
====
A more comprehensive treatment on the status of women in Scotland
today may be found in the following document produced by the Scottish
Executive:
"STRATEGIC GROUP ON WOMEN - IMPROVING THE POSITION OF WOMEN IN
SCOTLAND: AN AGENDA FOR ACTION."
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/social/ipwsaa-00.asp
I have excerpted a small portion from "Section One: Setting the scene
- the position of women in Scotland today":
"Inequality between women and men is both a widespread and persistent
feature of contemporary Scottish society. In general women have:
* less access than men to income, earnings, pensions and material resources
such as cars or housing;
* less access to time that is their own and not spent on caring for other
people or on paid or unpaid work;
* less access to political power and to decision-making across a range of
public bodies; and they have a 1 in 5 chance of experiencing domestic abuse
during their lives.
"The factors that contribute to this inequality are complex and
inter-related, and as a consequence there are often no easy or quick
means of reducing inequality. Not all women experience the same degree
of inequality though discrimination and prejudice can still affect
women whatever their social status and earning power. Social and
economic disadvantage, problems associated with living in rural areas,
and other types of discrimination and prejudice such as racism,
ageism, homophobia, or discrimination against disabled people, affect
both women and men, but tend to have a greater impact on women because
of the underlying gender inequalities and sexism that permeate
Scottish society."
Women speak on the issues:
---------------------------
"Since 1998, the Women in Scotland Consultative Forum (WISCF) has
brought together a wide range of women?s organisations to discuss
policy priorities with Ministers and civil servants. Among the key
issues consistently raised and discussed, and where women?s
organisations would like to see action on gender equality are:
* violence against women
* social inclusion and poverty
* employment and training, particularly equal pay and low pay
* childcare
* education
* decision-making in political and public life.
"All of these issues have been on the agenda of women?s organisations
for a considerable period of time, and all of them have been discussed
by the Group. There is a broad consensus about the areas where change
is most needed, and that there is still a long way to go to achieve
gender equality in Scotland. To make change happen a clear agenda with
specific policy goals is needed."
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/social/ipwsaa-04.asp
==
Also see "WOMEN AND MEN IN THE PROFESSIONS IN SCOTLAND - Executive
Summary." The Scottish Executive.
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/cru/kd01/red/men03.htm
From the Conclusion:
"There is a frequently expressed view that the position of women in
the professions will change as women enter professions in increasing
numbers. However, research elsewhere suggests that this will happen
neither automatically nor easily. A number of barriers are perceived
to continue to exist to the achievement of equality for women in
professions. These include exclusionary practices of male networks
(which may be neither consciously nor directly discriminatory, but
which nevertheless have the effect of excluding women); stereotyped
notions about 'women's' and 'men's' work and/or working styles;
resistance to changing patterns of working life and careers which
disadvantage women; a narrow interpretation of equal opportunities and
limited appreciation of the extent to which equal opportunities
policies and initiatives can improve women's position; and a failure
of professional organisations to take responsibility for the promotion
of equal opportunities."
==
Please read some excerpts from interesting forum post concerning women in Scotland:
"For many women in Scotland, waged poverty is a reality. Nearly 25
years after the passing of the Sex Discrimination and Equal Pay Acts,
the gender pay gap is as evident as ever, with Scottish women earning
only 72% of male average weekly earnings. The majority of low paid
workers are women."
"One of the main causes of waged poverty is job segregation. 51% of
women work in only three occupational groups - sales,
clerical/secretarial and personal/protective services. New jobs tend
to be part time low paid and in the service sector. The causes are of
course inter-related and include strong attitudes about suitable jobs
for men and women. Women are adapting to the changing labour market
but are gaining little in terms of pay and
status, while many men find that their skills have become obsolete.
Low paid and low skilled jobs tend to have poor employment conditions,
with few opportunities for training which might open up prospects for
better jobs."
"Choices are limited by lack of affordable child care, which is more
expensive than anywhere else in Europe. Another related issue is the
high cost of transport especially from peripheral housing estates and
rural areas. These two factors taken together restrict many women to
local jobs during school hours."
(Read more....
"Waged poverty for women in Scotland." posted Sept 15, 1999.
http://www.sdnp.undp.org/ww/women-economy/msg02625.html
Books and Publications
=======================
"Annotated Bibliography of Scottish Premodern Women's History."
http://www.medievalscotland.org/historia-scotarum/biblio/
Marshall, Rosalind K. Virgins and Viragos: A History of Women in
Scotland from 1080 to 1980. London: Collins, 1983. Order from
Amazon.com Order from Amazon.co.uk
Sanderson, Elizabeth C. Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century
Edinburgh, Studies in Gender History. London: Macmillan, 1996. Order
from Amazon.com Order from Amazon.co.uk
==
I hope you enjoy your reading! And I want to thank you once again for
a very interesting research topic!
Sincerely,
umiat
Google Search Strategy
Scottish women nineteenth century
Scottish women twentieth century
women in Scotland
Scottish women +history
nineteenth century life +Scotland +women
work and women in Scotland
** I also want to extend my thanks for additional references so
generously provided by a very kind "anonymous researcher" |
