Reprinted from the Winter 2020 edition of the Watervliet Shaker Journal.
Written by Johanna Batman
Why was work segregated by sex in Shaker communities? We celebrate the Shakers’ belief in the spiritual equality of men and women; Shaker founder Mother Ann Lee herself was revered as the female counterpart to Christ. Yet, to an outside observer, there is an uncomfortable perception that Shakers were confined to traditional gender roles, with men performing agricultural labor and carpentry, while women held primary responsibility for tasks such as cooking and laundry.
One explanation for this apparent disparity is a moral one: Shakers maintained physical division between men and women to reduce carnal temptation. While celibacy and gender segregation represented a rejection of the sin of carnality, it also arguably functioned as a rejection of inequality. Marriage among the Shakers was understood to be built upon the subjugation of a wife to her husband.
When Shaker communities were functioning well, the work performed by sisters and brethren was remarkably complementary. Scholar Glendyne Wergland notes, “the brethren’s most lucrative businesses were built on a foundation of women’s labor.” At Watervliet, the lucrative seed industry was the economic powerhouse of the community. Journal entries describe brethren from both Watervliet and Mount Lebanon setting out in wagons to sell their wares as far West as Auburn, Geneva, and even Buffalo. Yet, this industry depended equally on women’s labor. Picking, drying, sorting, and packaging seeds was all work performed by sisters.
Similarly, for basket-making, men split wood and turned handles, while women wove the reeds into a finished product to sell to “The World.” Sisters used special looms to weave fabric tape, which they then wove into colorful chair seats on chairs crafted by Shaker brethren. Between March 5th and March 10th in 1865, Sister Lydia at Watervliet painted three coats of varnish on 2 dozen chairs. The following week she wove seats on nine chair frames.
When tension arose between sisters and brethren, Shaker women exercised power through their work in ways that were not always visible to outsider observers. These women implemented what could effectively be called collective bargaining, even to the extent of boycotting their work if they believed that brethren were not contributing their fair share.
Why do the contributions of these women remain less visible? One reason may be that most outside observers who published historic accounts of the Shakers were men, and women and children are often absent from these narratives. Even contemporary scholars may not recognize parity among the Shakers by elevating men’s work with the title of “industry” while women’s work is seldom awarded the same stature.
As Shaker communities diminished and aged, certain responsibilities and divisions of labor became more fluid. Sister Lillian Barlow of Mount Lebanon manufactured chairs in the 1920s-1940s, keeping the famous industry going alone for the last several years of the community. At the end of the day, all work was a form of worship for the Shakers, and the need to keep their communities going led Shakers to relax restrictions and embrace economic opportunity wherever it led. In the final years of most Shaker communities, piece-work for factories and “fancy-goods” such as sewing baskets and needle emeries emerged as essential sources of income. In the end, it was “women’s work” that provided sustenance for the final generations of Shakers in New York.

Sources:
Campbell, D’Ann. (1978) Women’s life in utopia: the Shaker experiment in equality reappraised. The New England Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Mar., 1978), pp. 23-38
Wergland, Glendyne R. (2011). Sisters in the faith: Shaker women and equality of the sexes. University of Massachusetts Press, pg. 166
Sept 9, 1819. Letter from Morril Baker to the Brethren of the Mount Lebanon Office. Reel 26, I V-A-84 Western Reserve Microfilm
Watervliet Journals of Phebe Ann Buckingham
