Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Part 1 Introduction: Geography matters
- Part 2 Introduction: Analysis: aspects of the geography of society
- Part 3 Introduction: Synthesis: interdependence and the uniqueness of place
- 6 The re-structuring of a local economy: the case of Lancaster
- 7 A woman's place?
- 8 The laissez-faire approach to international labor migration: the case of the Arab Middle East
- Part 4 Introduction: Geography and society
- Index
7 - A woman's place?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Part 1 Introduction: Geography matters
- Part 2 Introduction: Analysis: aspects of the geography of society
- Part 3 Introduction: Synthesis: interdependence and the uniqueness of place
- 6 The re-structuring of a local economy: the case of Lancaster
- 7 A woman's place?
- 8 The laissez-faire approach to international labor migration: the case of the Arab Middle East
- Part 4 Introduction: Geography and society
- Index
Summary
The nineteenth century saw the expansion of capitalist relations of production in Britain. It was a geographically uneven and differentiated process, and the resulting economic differences between regions are well known: the rise of the coalfields, of the textile areas, the dramatic social and economic changes in the organization of agriculture, and so forth. Each was both a reflection of and a basis for the period of dominance which the UK economy enjoyed within the nineteenth-century international division of labour. In this wider spatial division of labour, in other words, different regions of Britain played different roles, and their economic and employment structures in consequence also developed along different paths.
But the spread of capitalist relations of production was also accompanied by other changes. In particular it disrupted the existing relations between women and men. The old patriarchal form of domestic production was torn apart, the established pattern of relations between the sexes was thrown into question. This, too, was a process which varied in its extent and in its nature between parts of the country, and one of the crucial influences on this variation was the nature of the emerging economic structures. In each of these different areas ‘capitalism’ and ‘patriarchy’ were articulated together, accommodated themselves to each other, in different ways.
It is this process that we wish to examine here. Schematically, what we are arguing is that the contrasting forms of economic development in different parts of the country presented distinct conditions for the maintenance of male dominance.
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- Geography Matters!A Reader, pp. 128 - 147Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1984
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