Women's Employment Bessie Rayner Parkes on Education Skilled Work and Women's Economic Independence 1859
1859Best.-Nr. 165681859. Parkes Bessie Rayner. The Market for Educated Female Labor 1859 argues that girls and young women should receive education or vocational training sufficient to support themselves rather than being prepared exclusively for marriage. Parkes wrote amid organized efforts to expand employment opportunities for middle-class women and in the same year that the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women was established. She rejects the assumption that marriage guaranteed lifelong financial support observing "The daughter may marry but her husband may die.or be too poor to support her and her children; let her at least be trained beforehand to some possible way of getting her bread." Her argument treats women's preparation for paid work as an ordinary parental responsibility rather than an emergency measure reserved for poverty. Parkes Bessie Rayner. The Market for Educated Female Labor. 1859. First edition. 6 pages present of an original 8 lacking the final two pages. Unbound measuring 8 1/4 x 5 inches. The text was delivered as a paper at the 1859 Bradford meeting of the Association for the Promotion of Social Science. Parkes states "We lay it down as a primary social law conceded by all political economists that a father ought to provide for all his children or give them the means of providing for themselves." She further counters the idea that paid employment among middle-class women was exceptional: "Probably every person present has a female relative or intimate friend whom trade-failure the exigencies of a numerous household or the early death of husband or father has compelled to this course; it is the experience of every family." The surviving text consequently links women's education to specific economic contingencies including business failure large households widowhood and the death of a father or husband. Parkes was then a central figure in the Langham Place circle and a founding editor of the English Woman's Journal established in 1858 to address women's employment education legal disabilities and related reforms. Her paper appeared as these activists were moving from publication and debate toward practical employment initiatives; the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women was founded in 1859 to train women and open additional occupations to them. At the time this description was prepared no copies were recorded in American institutional holdings consulted; OCLC search results remain subject to cataloging changes and should be reconfirmed. Repairs to the upper right corner and right edge of page 1 and a small repair to the left edge of page 6. Lacking the final two pages; good condition. The surviving six pages preserve Parkes's direct argument that women's education should provide the means for economic self-support in circumstances she described as common within middle-class families. unknown
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