Gendered occupations and opportunities: Women’s work, family life and independence in a few nineteenth-century towns in Sweden

Project description

Historical data insufficiently document women’s occupations. The project challenges this by using qualitative sources that report data on women’s life and work. Quantitative data offer demographic views of women that help explain their occupations and opportunities with regard to family background. The Demographic Database (DDB) at Umeå University has digitalized some parish registers, making the process of identifying women in other sources possible. This material allows for longitudinal life-course approaches and hints at women’s autonomy in relation to their demographic experiences. Four nineteenth-century towns that differed in socio-economic structure are analysed with regard to women’s occupations and demographic path, and to gender regimes and urban-industrial changes; factors which operate at both the individual and societal level and determine women’s position in family life and in the labor market, thereby shaping their occupational opportunities and degree of independence.