Their more sedentary occupations, and the longer hours they work in many cases outside the operation of the Factory Act, makes the evils of overcrowding, bad ventilation, bad drainage, etc., more detrimental to the health of women than of men workers.
Sec.6.Special Burdens incident on Women .-- We have now applied the four chief heads of the "sweating" disease--low wages, long hours, irregular employment, unsanitary conditions--to women's work, and have seen that the absolute pressure in each case is heavier on the weaker sex.
But in estimating the industrial condition of women, there are certain other considerations which must not be left out of sight.
To many women-workers, the duties of maternity and the care of children, which in a civilized human society ought to secure for them some remission from the burden, of the industrial fight, are a positive handicap in the struggle for a livelihood.

When a married woman or a widow is compelled to support herself and her family, the home ties which preclude her from the acceptance of regular factory work, tell fatally against her in the effort to earn a living.

Married women, and others with home duties which cannot be neglected, furnish an almost illimitable field of casual or irregular labour.

Not only is this irregular work worse paid than regular factory work, but its existence helps to keep up the pernicious system of "out-work" under which "sweating" thrives.

The commercial competition of to-day positively trades upon the maternity of women-workers.
In estimating the quantity of work which falls to the lot of industrial women-workers, we must not forget to add to the wage-work that domestic work which few of them can wholly avoid, and which is represented by no wages.