Married women on full-time shiftwork: Some domestic and social consequences

Abstract

A study was made of the social and domestic consequences of married women working on full-time shifts, and took the form of a sample survey of full-time married women shiftworkers in two firms. A total of 252 women were interviewed, of whom 171 were married, and 81 separated or widowed. They were not on the whole working from necessity, but in order to raise their family standard of living. In this, and in respect of the age groups in which they were most numerous, they were fairly typical of other post-war married women workers. They were, however, better paid than dayworkers. Shiftworking presented them with few problems as individuals, though the majority suffered from some fatigue. The women were studied in their roles not only as shiftworkers, but as housewives, wives and mothers. As housewives they benefited from short working hours, and time at home during the day; as wives and mothers their advantages were less evident. Their families, not surprisingly, were small, and under half the women had dependent children. Young children were adequately supervised in their mother's absence, but older school children were sometimes left. The chief complaint of husbands, was of their wife's absence while they were at home. They were called upon to give some help in the house, but did not take over the housewife's duties to any great extent. The ways in which the women benefited from shiftworking, both financially, and as housewives, tended to justify in their eyes their absence from the house at times when husbands or children might need them. Shiftwork was popular with the women, but this did not prevent a high rate of absence, or necessarily mean that shiftwork was more than one phase in the women's working lives.