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Seeking Female Sexual Emancipation and the Writing of Women's History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2015

Elizabeth H. Pleck
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Abstract

One of Louise Tilly's most widely cited articles was “Women's Work and European Fertility Patterns” (1976), coauthored with Joan Scott and Miriam Cohen. The subject of the article was a major increase in female illegitimacy at the time of the Industrial Revolution, which Tilly regarded as an instance of female vulnerability caused by isolation and urban migration. Surveys of recent writings by American and British historians about this subject suggest the impact of contemporary attitudes toward female sexual autonomy. This literature offers a far more positive portrait of the causes and consequences of female illegitimacy than Tilly provided.

Type
Special Section: Louise Tilly in Intergenerational Perspective
Information
Social Science History , Volume 38 , Issue 1-2 , Spring/Summer 2014 , pp. 105 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2015 

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