Textile Wages, Women’s Earning Power, and Household Living Standards in the Yangtze Delta, 1756–c.1930

Abstract

This article combines three datasets of women’s real earnings in Yangtze Delta textile production between 1756 and 1930. We evaluate the instrumental and intrinsic value of women’s work, considering its impact on household economies and women’s status in a period of societal and economic change. Although women’s real income generally declined throughout the investigated period, industrialization and globalization offered opportunities for specific groups of women. They contributed substantially to household living standards, depending on their age and marital status. Adult women engaging in handweaving could support a family of five well beyond subsistence level in the late nineteenth century, and so could female spinning factory workers in the 1920s. In modern factories, young female workers increased their autonomy in marriage or household decision-making. The article thus delivers new insights into women’s earning capacity as well as fresh data, enriching Chinese as well as recent international historiography on household wellbeing.