Zniewolone przez pracę czy dzięki pracy uwolnione? [dot. A. Urbanik-Kopeć: Anioł w domu, mrówka w fabryce]

The aim of this critical essay is to analyse social and economic contexts of women’s work at the verge of 19th and 20th centuries. In the essay’s foreground are: 1) the discussion of Polish emancipatory discourses, the relation of liberal feminists to working class women; as well as 2) the characteristics of the reproductive work performed by women in the era of industrial revolution along with the impact the industrialization had on transformations of the ways genders were perceived. The article also touches upon the emancipatory role played by the factory – an attempt was made to answer the question: To what extent the commercialization of women’s work due to industrial revolutions allowed women to escape the shackles of patriarchy, and to what extent it contributed to their further entanglement in the network of dependency.