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Reconsidering The “Firstmale-Breadwinner Economy”: Women's Labor Force Participation in the Netherlands, 1600–1900

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 18; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13545701.2012.734630

1466-4372

Ariadne Schmidt, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk,

Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics

Abstract Abstract This contribution provides methods for estimating developments in women's labor force participation (LFP) in the Netherlands, for both preindustrial and industrializing eras. It explains long-term developments in Dutch LFP and concludes that the existing image of Dutch women's historically low participation in the labor market should be reconsidered. Contrary to what many economic historians have supposed, Dutch women's LFP was not lower, and was perhaps even higher, than elsewhere in the pre-1800 period. As in other Western European countries, the decline of (married) Dutch women's LFP only started in the nineteenth century, though it then probably declined faster than elsewhere. Thus, this study concludes that the Netherlands did not constitute the "first male-breadwinner economy," as historians and economists have suggested. Scrutinizing the nineteenth-century data in more detail suggests that a complex of demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural changes resulted in this sharp decline of Dutch women's crude activity rates. KEYWORDS: Women's labor force participationeconomic developmenthousehold laborNetherlands, 1600–1900JEL Codes: J21J82 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors thank Jane Humphries and Carmen Sarasua Garcia for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this study and for their encouragement to merge two individual papers on the Netherlands into one longer contribution. Notes The first national census was held by the French in 1795, but the first official Dutch census dates from 1829. However, only in 1849 did the census systematically list occupational records. For sources used, see Table 1 and the section "Primary and Printed Sources" in the reference list. For more information regarding the archival sources used, please contact the authors. For an elaboration of the method leading to the estimates of non-household heads, see Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (2007, 2008a). This was true not only for the Dutch Republic. For early modern London, see Amy Louise Erickson (2008). For child labor, see Peter Kirby (2003). This trend is contrary to developments in early nineteenth-century Britain, where the decrease of the commons by the enclosures led to a decline of wives' and children's subsistence activities in agriculture, as well as to a greater dependence on wage labor (Jane Humphries 1990). For the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see van Nederveen Meerkerk (2008b). In fact, the rise in the total number of children from 1849–99, combined with a rise in LFP by children ages 12 to 16, led to a slight rise in the percentage of children (under 16) in the total labor force (van Nederveen Meerkerk 2009). We specify "to a lesser degree" because it seems from the census of 1899 that married women in, for instance, retailing were relatively often registered with an occupation, although some underrecording did take place (Jacques van Gerwen 2011). For example, see the Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN) and Genlias databases. Van Poppel, van Dalen, and Walhout (2009) provide only the overall participation rate of remarried women, who in 47 percent of all cases over the period 1812–1922 stated an occupation. If we would separate the data for different periods, it would be possible to show to what extent the rate of employment for remarried women changed over time. Recently, one of the authors received a research grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) to start a new research project on this topic. For more information, see http://socialhistory.org/nl/node/2308.