Abstract

Women had long been a part of Germany’s economic development. In the early period of German industrialization, manufacturers utilized female labor in the countryside to avoid the urban guild system. By the end of the nineteenthth century, a significant increase in women’s participation in the formal economy was already evident (the growth rate for their participation averaged over 30 percent from 1882 to 1925). The figures for Prussia are even more striking – there, the dominant role of agriculture was first supplanted by industrial production in the 1890s.

The Textile Workforce (1882–1925)

Source

German Reich

Prussia

Rhine Province

Government District Düsseldorf (Prussia)

Men

Women

Total

Men

Women

Total

Men

Women

Total

Men

Women

Total

1882

Number

527,079

323,780

850,859

%

61.9

38.1

Growth

1895

Number

517,230

427,961

945,191

125,210

120,492

245,702

50,880

40,846

91,366

%

54.7

45.3

51.0

49.0

55.7

44.3

Growth

- 1.9%

32.2%

11.1%

1907

Number

529,008

528,235

1,057,243

234,867

210,585

445,452

101,282

73,425

174,707

%

50.0

50.0

52.7

47.3

58.0

42.0

Growth

2.3%

23.4%

11.9%

87.6%

74.8%

81.3%

1913

Number

199,058

205,120

404,178

60,852

62,992

123,844

%

49.3

50.7

49.1

50.9

Growth

- 15.2%

- 2.6%

- 9.3%

19.6%

55.6%

35.5%

1925

Number

514,858

681,262

1,196,120

229,012

245,471

474,483

88,205

78,915

167,120

%

43.0

57.0

48.3

51.7

52.8

47.2

Growth

- 2.7%

29.0%

13.1%

15.0%

19.7%

17.4%

- 12.9%

7.5%

- 4.3%

Source: Wilhem Bochmert, “Wandlungen der deutschen Volkswirtschaft 1888–1907: Ergebnisse der Berufs- und Betriebszählungen”, in Arbeiterfreund, 48 (1910): 24–25, 136; George Neuhaus, “Die berufliche und soziale Gliederung im Zeitalter des Kapitalismus”, in Grundriss der Socialökonomik, Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1914, 9: 399, 424-25; reprinted in Kathleen Canning, Languages of Labor and Gender: Female Factory Work in Germany, 1850–1914. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996, p. 32.