…everywhere and at all social and class levels. New inventions and how to use them opened doors for poor women to improve their situations through work. Acceptance of women as thinking beings as the era progressed closed the gap to give women common causes to rally around. The place men and women were equal was in the use of new “gadgets’, because no one could figure them out. The dynamics of men and women, and poor and wealthy, changed as the Victorian Era progresses.
By 1900 the railway, typewriter, telephones, post, camera, sewing machine, synthetic fabric fibers, and the bicycle became used in every day life. Women became secretaries, operators, and opened their own shops.
The Tailor Made Garment movement had women designing, making, and selling garments, as well as wearing them to work outside the home. The industry gave them credibility and confidence outside being just an asset to a husband.
(Photo: Mary’s Haberdashery in London started in the 1880’s and was still in business well into the 1980’s)