Question

How were the lives like for the women and children during the industrial revolution?

Answer 1

Instructions -

• Mention the industries where the women and children were employed in during the Industrial Revolution.
• Discuss what life was for them while working in the industries.

Answer:

The women and children were forced to work to supplement men's meagre wages. Industrialists preferred to employ women and children because they would easily agree to work in poor working conditions and for lower wages than men.

Women and children were employed in large numbers in the cotton textile industry in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Women were also the main workers in the silk, lace-making and knitting industries, as well as in the metal industries of Birmingham.

Children worked in textile factories because they were small enough to move between tightly packed machinery. The long hours of work, including cleaning the machines on Sundays, allowed them no fresh air or exercise.

Children sometimes caught their hair in machines or crushed their hands. Some even died when they fell into machines as they dropped off to sleep from exhaustion.

Though women got financial independence and
self-esteem from their jobs, they had to tolerate humiliating terms of work. They lost the children at birth or in
early childhood and had to live in squalid urban slums.