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Participation rates of women and men and occupational structure in 18th and 19th century Spain

Participation rates of women and men and occupational structure in 18th and 19th century Spain

Carmen Sarasua, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

The standard interpretation of modern economic growth, based on the concept of structural change in GDP and employment (Kuznets), argue that population occupied in non-agricultural activities grew as a result of Industrialization. In the case of Spain, its weak industrial growth would be reflected not only in the low industrial GDP but also in the very low share of non-agricultural population, which reached 50 per cent only in the 1920s. Yet in the last years the literature is showing, by members of this research group among others, that what these numbers actually reflect is the fact that official data on occupations ignore much of women's work. When this is taken into account not only the total occupied population, and women's participation rates, increase. Given the gender segregation of the labor market, taking women's work into account also changes the share of non-agricultural employment, since women worked mostly in manufactures (particularly textiles), and services (domestic service and retailing).

Our research group investigates women's and men's occupations in pre-industrial labor markets. Our conclusion is consistent with what was suggested by proto-industrial models in the 1970s and 80s through micro studies: manufactures were widespread in many parts of rural Europe. Our results confirm what Maxine Berg argued in 1993: "It is now apparent that the eighteenth-century economy was much more industrial than once thought". This Project aims at describing how structural change in employment took place in Spain. We (1) analyze the occupational structure of the Spanish population in the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly of women and children; (2) codify our databases of historical occupations with the PSTI coding system, which facilitates the international comparison of our results; (3) analyze the importance of textile manufactures in rural Spain, and the extent to which the share of non-agricultural employment was higher in the 18th century than in the 19th century, unlike the standard vision of structural change in employment has traditionally argued; (4) the ages of schooling and entrance to labor markets, in relation to formation of human capital, children's work, and family income; (5) continue our previous research on historical wages, moving from series of monetary wages of a few occupations to the calculation of family income, using family budgets as proxies for long term tendencies in inequality and poverty; (6) study double occupations and temporary and seasonal migrations, important sources of income for families yet very poorly known.