Rural women in late nineteenth‐century Denmark

Abstract

Around 1860–80 all the central areas of rural women's work in Denmark – spinning, weaving and baking – were gradually taken over by the growing industry in the towns. During the 1880s, also, women's dairy work became a field of male labour in the newly‐established cooperative dairies around the country. The sale of dairy products has played a great role in Danish agriculture and in the national economy from the 1860s until today. The article throws light on the place of women in dairy production until the 1880s and examines the factors which determined their being pressed out of this sort of work. Finally the problems and consequences with which women (and men) were faced when the transition to cooperatives dairies gave rise to an entirely new pattern of work and sex roles are examined.