Women have always worked. Despite this continuity, there have been profound changes in the economic roles of American women in the past three centuries. In colonial America, the work performed by women in the home and the field helped ensure the survival of the family. Child rearing, housework, food processing, cloth and apparel manufacture, candlemaking, and a variety of farm chores were the primary responsibility of women. Outside the home, positions as domestics or farm servants were sometimes taken, especially by unmarried women. Market activity also included the sale of handicrafts and household manufacture.

In the antebellum period, factory production emerged and greatly expanded employment opportunities for women in the Northeast. Women played a major role in a number of industries, especially textiles. Opportunities for women continued to increase in the late nineteenth century with the rising demand for clerical workers. However, by 1890, only 19 percent of adult women participated in the labor market. Forty percent of single women took part, but only 4.6 percent of married women did. This is where Claudia Goldin's history picks up.

Goldin examines the movement of women into paid employment between 1890 and 1980 in “The Changing Economic Role of Women: A Quantitative Approach.” She focuses on white married women because of “their numerical importance among all women, and because changes in their economic role have had repercussions transcending the economic sphere.”