Synthesized answer
Women typically play a role in industrial exemption by being among the first to be exempted from productive industry carried on for gain [1]. This process of progressive exemption commonly begins with the wife, or chief wife [1]. The principle of gentility being transmissible acts to place her above the common slave, and as this principle gains prescriptive authority, it invests her with a prerogative of leisure, which is a chief mark of gentility [2]. If her owner's wealth permits, the wife's exemption expands to include freedom from debasing menial service and handicraft [2].
In some tribal communities, a marked distinction is made between the occupations of men and women, with women by prescriptive custom being held to those employments from which industrial occupations proper develop [3]. Men are exempt from these "vulgar employments" and reserved for other pursuits [3]. Virtually the whole range of industrial employments is an outgrowth of what is classed as woman's work in primitive barbarian communities [5].
Synthesized from the book passages below. Chat with the book on Feynman for follow-up.
From the book
omen, and presently also of other slaves engaged in attendance on their master's person and in producing goods for him. A division of labour presently sets in, whereby personal service and attendance on the master becomes the special office of a portion of the servants, while those who are wholly employed in industrial occupations proper are removed more and more from all immediate relation to the person of their owner. At the same time those servants whose office is personal service, including domestic duties, come gradually to be exempted from productive industry carried on for gain.…
; and hence there is a moral incongruity in her occupying herself with the debasing employments of her fellow-servants. However completely she may be subject to her master, and however inferior to the male members of the social stratum in which her birth has placed her, the principle that gentility is transmissible will act to place her above the common slave; and so soon as this principle has acquired a prescriptive authority it will act to invest her in some measure with that prerogative of leisure which is the chief mark of gentility. Furthered by this principle of transmissible…
of the superior class from work has not gone far enough to make the designation "leisure class" altogether applicable. The tribes belonging on this economic level have carried the economic differentiation to the point at which a marked distinction is made between the occupations of men and women, and this distinction is of an invidious character. In nearly all these tribes the women are, by prescriptive custom, held to those employments out of which the industrial occupations proper develop at the next advance. The men are exempt from these vulgar employments and are reserved for…
two nearly indispensable to a socially blameless standing for all women, including the wealthiest and most reputable. This rule held so long as there still was no large class of people wealthy enough to be above the imputation of any necessity for manual labor and at the same time large enough to form a self-sufficient, isolated social body whose mass would afford a foundation for special rules of conduct within the class, enforced by the current opinion of the class alone. But now there has grown up a large enough leisure class possessed of such wealth that any aspersion on the…
t the earlier barbarian stage is not the original out of which any appreciable portion of later industry has developed. In the later development it survives only in employments that are not classed as industrial,--war, politics, sports, learning, and the priestly office. The only notable exceptions are a portion of the fishery industry and certain slight employments that are doubtfully to be classed as industry; such as the manufacture of arms, toys, and sporting goods. Virtually the whole range of industrial employments is an outgrowth of what is classed as woman's work in the…