The "Disremembered" of the Antebellum South: A New Look at the Invisible Labor of Poor Women

Abstract

This study pinpoints fallacies in three conventional explanations of the gender division of labor in rural households of the antebellum South. First, the conceptual focus on independent household producers ignores the large population of poor landless households who owned no means of production. Second, the experiences of poor Southern women contradict the agrarian vision of "separate but equal" labor spheres. Third, adequate explanations are not provided by the view that household labor was divided between males' wage labor and women's subsistence work. Conceptualizations of the "separate household-based sphere" of women's work ignore the extent to which antebellum Southern women's work varied by class and race. Working solely within the household was a luxury enjoyed only by the wives of more economically secure farm owners or proprietors. Nearly half of the wives and female heads of household engaged in income-generating activities outside the home, and the majority of them were employed in occupations culturally ascribed to be "men's work."