Response to "Stratifying by Sex"

In her essay "Stratifying by Sex: Understanding the History of Working Women," Alice Kessler-Harris discusses the history of women in the labor market and how society's perception of working women has changed over the last few centuries. While I think Kessler-Harris does an excellent job summarizing each "stage" of history, I believe that she does not give enough attention to the transitions between these stages. For example, the first labor structure she describes is that of Puritan America: both men and women were responsible for the family business as well as the moral education of the children. This, in turn, eventually gave way to a society in which "ladies" stayed at home and took care of the children while poorer women who needed the money toiled away in factories. However, although Kessler-Harris believes that these two stages are dramatically different, I don't think that's the case. In colonial times, the richest women (what ever little bit of American aristocracy there was back then) still didn't work and took care of the children at home while assisted by many slaves. The woman who worked alongside her husband (I believe the example in the essay is a tavern-keeper's wife) did so only out of economic necessity. If she didn't help out, the tavern would go out of business. In the late 19th century, it was the exact same thing, except that instead of working in the family business, women worked in factories. This change, however, was not due to some American moral or ideological revelation, but rather could be credited to the Industrial Revolution. The exact same thing was going on as before, except women were just working in a different place now. Industry in general had just shifted from small, independently-owned businesses to large, corporate-owned factories. In fact, oftentimes, spouses still worked at the same factory, albeit at different jobs. Thus, I think Kessler-Harris might extrapolate a little too far in places like that, and that she might be overlooking much "easier" explanations for the phenomenons she describes.