Setting women to work: The assignment system and female convict labour in Van Diemen's land, 1820–1839

Abstract

Female convict labour has long been considered of little value and female convicts, it has been argued, suffered from systematic underemployment within the colonial labour market. Parallel with this, the female convict assignment system has been depicted as a system of state‐run prostitution. This article re‐examines these claims in the light of evidence from Van Diemen's Land in the 1820s and 1830s. There, demand for female convict labour appears to have been consistently high and the job allocation of female convict workers guided by detailed knowledge about their skills and previous occupations rather than by their sexual attractiveness.