Suggested preparatory reading:
Jane Whittle and Mark Hailwood, ‘The gender division of labour in early modern England’, Economic History Review, 73 (2020), 3-32; Jane Whittle, ‘A critique of approaches to “domestic work”: women, work and the preindustrial economy’, Past and Present, 243 (2019); Marjorie K. McIntosh, Working Women in English Society, 1300-1620 (2005); Pamela Sharpe, ‘The female labour market in English agriculture during the Industrial Revolution: expansion or contraction?’ Agricultural History Review, 47 (1999), 161-81; Ilana Krausman Ben Amos, Adolescence and Youth in Early Modern England (1994), ch. 6.