A Methodology for Revising Estimates: Female Market Participation in the U.S. Before 1940

Abstract

This paper responds to the debate over historical rates of female labor force participation. The discussion is presented in 3 separate sections. The debate over underenumeration of womens marketwork is 1st reviewed the authors noting problems of gender bias and chronological consistency. Next 3 recent efforts to compensate for underenumeration of self- or family-employed women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries on the national level are critically analyzed. This section examines female market employment in specific areas including providing boarding services farming and farm laboring household self-employment and manufacturing. Departing from critique and review the papers final section provides a disaggregated approach to and detailed analysis of married womens and womens occupations in the Massachusetts towns of Montague and Easthampton in 1880. Their statistical analysis includes data on all women aged 15 and older from a federal manuscript population census a 20% sample of men in the same age range and examination of the federal manufacturing census and Massachusetts state census of 1875. The percentage of female market participation strongly related to the type of industry and the overall labor force engaged in manufacturing and mechanical occupation highly sensitive to local economic context. Listed estimates of 10.1% married women in Montague holding jobs and 9.9% for Easthampton differed markedly from the authors upper bound estimates of 47.3% and 68.2% participation respectively. Future efforts to revise and refine measures of womens market activity may prove fruitful.