Abstract
AbstractLabour market engagement by women is an important determinant of female autonomy that may also affect their demographic behaviour. In order to bring about the conditions for the female autonomy that characterized the European marriage pattern (in which women had a say in the decision about when and whom they marry), women needed to earn a decent wage. This is clearly affected by the gender wage ratio and the possibility of women earning their own living and having the option of remaining single. So far no attempt has been made to compare the wages of women across Europe over the long run. In this article we provide evidence on the wages of unskilled women for seven European countries (represented by cities or regions within these countries) between 1300 and 1800. Our evidence shows that there were two worlds of female labour. In the south of Europe women earned about 50 per cent of the wage of unskilled male labourers, a ratio that seems to have been fixed by custom. In the northern and western parts of Europe this ratio was much higher during late medieval period, but it showed a declining trend between about 1500 and 1800, a change that was caused by market forces.
Highlights
There has been a lot of work on long-term trends in real wages of men in the world economy
Following Carmichael et al (2016), the focus should be on the relative position of women in the labour market, which is an important dimension of their autonomy
As we have argued above, the participation of women in the labour market is an important dimension of their relative autonomy
Summary
There has been a lot of work on long-term trends in real wages of men in the world economy. Following Carmichael et al (2016), the focus should be on the relative position of women in the labour market, which is an important dimension of their autonomy To illustrate this point, in the parish of Colyton (Devon, England), Sharpe (2002) found an increase in the age at marriage over the 17th century. Whereas the wages of women had been relatively high after the Black Death until the early 16th century, the gender wage gap increased rapidly afterwards, and in England and Sweden in the 18th century, for example, women earned less than half the wage of men – less than in Italy and Spain (or Germany). Given the nature of our data, we can only briefly touch upon this discussion, .
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