Women's entry into labor inspection, like their debut in other inspectorates, bore the signs of nineteenth-century origins. The very job of l'inspectrice du travail represented a double contradiction of prevailing notions about women's essential nature and place in French society. Although the ubiquitous domestic ideology of industrializing societies assumed that woman's innate qualities destined her for the home, the ouvrière (woman worker) who daily left her foyer for the workplace became a familiar figure. Women comprised 31 percent of French workers in 1866, nearly 34 percent in 1886, and 37 percent in 1906. Indeed, married women were five times more likely to work in France than they were in Great Britain in 1911 – a reality reflecting economic necessity and Frenchwomen's important role in agriculture, small family shops, and piecework at home. By 1900, women workers, like child laborers of earlier decades, were also the object of special legislation, for politicians anxious about depopulation attached new urgency to protecting working wives, mothers, and young women destined to become mothers.