| From sixteenth to eighteenth century, Britain is in a period of transi-tion from traditional agricultural society to modern commercial society. At this time, Britain forwarded gradually from manual workshop to mod-ern machinery plant. The transformation of British society and the econ-omy, not only from the macro profoundly affects the British historical development process but also from the micro influence to the develop-ment of social individual. British women as a social individual their work and life during this period had also undergone major changes.In traditional society, women are the family centered, but with the prosperity of the trade, the rise of the rural industry and agriculture fields generated the capitalist revolution, women as labor widely participate in social production, they were mainly engaged in the textile industry and some service industries etc. With the industrial revolution and machine factories established, most of the women entered the textile factories, and the labor intensity sharply increased in women. The workplace, environ-mental transformation and the increased labor intensity, had a major im-pact on women and their families. But they were as vast and cheap labor, had made the indelible contribution for the development of the British economy during the transition period.This paper mainly expounds the intensity of labor of the women in British textile from sixteenth to eighteenth century. Through the compar- ison of the women’s labor strength in manual workshop period with the beginning of the industrial revolution in textile industry, combined with the change of the social economic environment and women as labor force to society to participate in the production of this background, to illustrate that because of increase of labor intensity in the early industrial revolu-tion, took significant influence to women, and thus more profoundly re-vealed women made the sacrifice and contribution during the UK eco-nomic and social development. |
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