‘Women’s Factory Night Work’ in Germany: Changing Classification Schemes in Varying Environments, 1891–1994

Since the nineteenth century, the regulation of working time has been a fundamental dimension of the emerging labour market system. The distinguishing of work and non-work into separate social fields reveals the system’s external differentiation, while the various arrangements of working hours are connected to the system’s internal differentiation across Europe. As early as 1839, when the Prussian state started to regulate labour conditions, child labour (under nine years) was banned, while juveniles’ working time in factories was restricted to ten hours, since working for longer periods ruined the young men’s health, making them unfit for the army. These legal