Counting Care in Eighteenth Century Britain

My research focuses on the relationship between productive and reproductive labour of women in industrial Britain. It will conduct a comparative study of care work in London and Edinburgh to assess to what extent and in what ways this relationship was conditioned by economic changes (Scottish industrialisation and mechanization of labour vs. gradual labour shifts towards the tertiary sector in London). It will maintain that surveying care work (paid and unpaid) is key to understanding of economic development and industrialisation while also informing contemporary debates on care crisis and the exploitation of female reproductive bodies within the care economy.