A Critique of Approaches to ‘Domestic Work’: Women, Work and the Pre-Industrial Economy*

This article examines historians’ approaches to work, and particularly women’s housework and care work, in the preindustrial economy. It offers a critique of existing approaches adopted by historians, in which women’s work is often described as ‘domestic’ without a clear definition being offered. The effect is to imply that much of women’s work fell outside the economy. These approaches are then traced back to their roots in classical and neoclassical economic thought, and in feminist theories of social reproduction and domestic labour. The second half of the article offers a way forward. It examines feminist critiques of the UN guidelines of national accounting (used to calculate GDP), which argue that housework and care work are part of the wider economy, and shows how the relevant data can be collected. This approach is then briefly applied to the early modern English economy, to demonstrate the difference in perspective it offers. It is shown, for instance, that housework and care work were highly commercialised in this period. The conclusion offers a clearer definition of different types of work, arguing that housework and care work for the family should be defined as subsistence services.