Class and gender are inseparable
Social class was never neutral about sex, and being a man or a woman always meant something different depending on your class. To understand either one, you have to study both together.
Industry split home from work
As industry grew, men's and women's roles were pulled apart into a public world of business and politics and a private world of home and family. This division grew alongside the rise of capitalist enterprise rather than existing as a timeless natural order.
Women's work became invisible
In family firms, wives and daughters still contributed money, labour and connections, but they moved into behind-the-scenes roles. Their part in building the family's capital and success was increasingly overlooked, even while the business depended on it.
Religious revival shaped middle-class values
The outlook of the emerging middle class grew out of religious revival movements, both dissenting and established-church evangelicals. Faith supplied the moral case for separating men's public duties from women's domestic ones.
Gender roles are constantly remade
The boundary between men's and women's spheres was never fixed. It kept shifting as people redrew it in daily life, so it has to be studied as an ongoing process rather than a settled rule.