Moving with the times: Where Women Work

Before reading on, take this small test. What image pops into your mind following the phrase 'Mobile Women'? Be honest…..? Nurse? hairdresser? bag-lady?... sex-worker?. The image of the peripatetic female worker is usually ambiguous and not always positive. I leave you to decide which is which, from this - carefully selected - choice. The principle here is how working women navigate through a European, now global, economic arena where there are new tensions arising in the field of where and how women work.

The European pre-industrial Guild movement (12th-15th Century) provides a timely insight into this, not-so-new issue. Guilds- early-day Trades Unions - existed to protect the supply-side of their specific crafts. At this time, mobile working was commonplace. The 'journeyman' principle included women, the skilled artisan who followed demand for their trade around the country. After all, who do you think provided the Royal courts - the most mobile of folk - with their insatiable on-the-hoof demand for clothes, horses, hounds and high cuisine. Demands for new court apparel provided high-status work- mainly to women - in multi-talented teams of dressmakers-royal, embroidery, bead, silk, lace-work…. They spent their entire working careers on the move.

The World Wars illustrated just how mobile women could be, they became the ultimate 'flexible', almost magical workforce - 'there you see them, now you don't!. The converse is also true. Where pre-industrial static, usually (but not exclusively) rural lifestyles dominated, ALL the family worked in the home- the original cottage industry included men. Each family member was an equal income-yielding unit- 'childhood' did not exist thus children worked as soon as they walked, no school, no toys.

Consider a range of fictional 'moving women' - the protagonist in Chocolat was hardly welcomed with open arms (she moved around too often for comfort) and contrasts with Mary Poppins - she was acceptable, the caring Nanny. Then we have Holly Golightly, in the classic, Breakfast at Tiffany's - the relationship with absent Sugar Daddy was wonderfully understated, but much was suggested by it.

Blame falls squarely on the rise of the aspirational, pan-European middle class. Created here was the 'lady-at-home' , the first status symbol (no need for double income), forged during the Victorian era. As an ideal it remains powerful, even if we no longer subscribe to it. Like so many Victorian double-standards, it was a powerful notion which defined a century of gender roles and remains in the background today. For many working women/mothers this tension - between the internal domestic and external economic worlds - continues.

21st Century employment - principally the knowledge-economy and the IT-based sectors - provides a new spin on 'working from home'- do we need to be physically mobile anymore? Many sector jobs now provide the potential to be simultaneously at home AND at work? Which female-biased sectors will retain the need to move around…..go on, take that test again, and see if the image in your head changes……

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