Earle And Meerkerk Summary

This critical review will look at the articles that were written by Peter Earle in 1989 about The Female Labour Market in London in the 17th and 18th centuries and Elise Van Nederveen Meerkerk in 2006 about women’s work in the Dutch textile industry, 1582 – 1810. Why Earle and Meerkerk utilise different methodologies to analyse the role of women in the pre-industrial labour market. It will evaluate how much methodology drives the result and whether their conclusions are more or less successful because of it. It will look at both Earle and Meerkerk’s approach to the subject, where they get their information and how they use it.
Both Earle and Meerkerk refer to an article wrote by Alice Clark in 1919 about women’s work in production in the 17th and 18th century and her idea that there was once a “golden age” or “bon vieux temps” for women pre-industrialisation.
He suggest that Clarks’s arguments she puts out there was just accepted and he is the first one to look at her evidence more closely. He question that there were ever a “golden age” for women in the workplace and express it as being “illusive”. Earle has reports from between 1660 – 1725. Earle gather his information using a quantitative approach, looking at primary sources such as witness statements from church courts. He analysed tables of data, from historians such as Wrigley and Schofield, and use this to form the basis of his arguments. He collected his data from divided districts in London, what job title they had, age of men and women, whether they were full time or part- time employed. He also had data of whether they were upper or lower class, also whether they were literate and their reading skills. His methodology demonstrate that women with low literacy skills would be in lower paid jobs like silk twisting /sewing and domestic servants compare to literate women had high status jobs like teaching and