Women’s Work, The First 20,000 Years, “A Tradition With a Reason.”

 

The reading is about the introduction to the history of the relationship between women and textiles. Judith Brown found that whether or not a community relies on a woman for a certain task such as weaving, depends on the care of her child. Usually a woman’s job includes something that doesn’t require a lot of concentration and it dull and repetitive. In addition, it involves tasks where the child wouldn’t be in any kind of danger and it relatively close to home. Common jobs include crafts like spinning, weaving, and sewing. It used to be that a common job for women in societies worldwide involved food and clothing. However, today it doesn’t exist as much because we buy our clothes already made.

In Denmark fifty years ago, women bought their yarns already spun and then would weave their own basic cloth to make household items. They would make dishtowels, bath mats, scarves, blankets and tablecloths. In Greece thirty years ago, people bought factory made clothing, but were still making household woolens from scratch. Women would spend as much spinning as they would in food production. During this time, most of the families time was spent on textile related activities.

Then came the Industrial Revolution, where the power loom, the spinning jenny, and the cotton gin brought women out of their homes and into the dangerous factories. Today, society has evolved so women can work on the computer or telephone and still watch their children. Now that factories have taken over the jobs of weaving, Americans have engaged in weaving only though childhood games.

Then the article gives a description on the process it takes to spin and weave. It says the first thing to do is to take small fibers and twist a number of them together to make a strong thread. Then it describes the different lengths fibers come in; such as hemp is twelve feet long. But for short fibers, such as cotton, the thread will need to be extended. Therefore, the ends of the fibers need to be twisted together to lock it in place. The best way to do this is to use a spindle. The tool can be used in different ways to twist the fibers and to hold the finished thread. In the Neolithic era, people discovered that in order to reduce the wobble as the spindle turns and to prolong the spin, they invented the spindle whorl. This was a little flywheel made of clay, with a hole in the middle that would be added to the spindle. Then in the middle ages came the spinning wheel, which would work four times faster then a spindle. In the eighteenth century came the invention of the mechanical spinning machine, known as the spinning jenny. Once the thread is made, the weaving of the cloth can begin. This consists of interlacing the set of threads, and then pulling it tight. The simplest weave is the plain weave, which is found in most household items.


By: Hilary Maheu