"The machines, the modern mode of production, slowly undermined domestic production and not just for thousands but for millions of women the question arose: Where do we now find our livelihood?"

Clara Zetkin’s words capture a pivotal transformation in the lives of countless women during the era of industrialization. As machines and new methods of production spread across societies, the traditional forms of domestic labor that had long provided women with both occupation and economic security were rapidly eroded. Home-based work such as weaving, spinning, sewing, and other craft-based trades that women had carried out for generations became obsolete or were centralized into large, machine-driven factories. The rise of industrial capitalism did not merely change the locations of work; it fundamentally restructured the entire landscape of economic opportunity available to women.

Where once women contributed to household economies and even earned vital supplementary incomes through domestic craft, the mechanization of these processes either wiped out their roles entirely or drove their integration into wage labor under exploitative and often grueling conditions. Millions who had once been productive at home now faced an existential challenge, no longer valued in the structures that previously supported them, their former expertise and labor devalued or rendered unnecessary. The question of subsistence became urgent, compelling vast numbers of women to seek means of survival in an unfamiliar and frequently hostile labor market.

These changes did not merely provoke material hardship; they also altered social and gender relations. Previously, women’s unpaid or underpaid domestic labor was at least partially regulated and interpreted within familial or communal contexts. With industrial production draining this source of work, women were thrust into public spaces where their labor could be openly exploited and, in many cases, actively resisted. Zetkin points to this historical shift as a root cause in women’s struggle for economic independence and for collective action, highlighting how the logic of modern production forced women’s labor into new configurations, and in so doing, raised profound new questions, both personal and political, about livelihood, autonomy, and social justice.