he Women's Liberation movement didn't come up with the idea of women working outside the home. Women have been working outside the home, growing crops or earning money for thousands of years to feed their children
Absolutely Xanthippe, it was only ever an option for the upper classes.
With the opening up of the middle class during the Victorian era there was a brief time where women who where not part of the aristocracy would 'manage'the home & servants but WW 1 brought an end to much of that.
Poor women have always worked their fingers to the bone. If they didn't die in childbirth, that is.