The profits of unpaid work. ‘Assisting labour’ of women in the early modern urban Dutch economy

Abstract

In the debates on the significance of women's work, wage labour attracted most attention. Women's unpaid assistance directed to a male relative or the family business was highly invisible and is often neglected by historians. This leads to the underestimation of women's work in the past. Even though in the Dutch Republic changes in labour relations reduced the opportunity for spouses to work in partnership, much work was carried out as unpaid ‘assistance’ within the context of the family economy. This article gives an overview of women's unpaid work, highlights the different activities carried out by women and shows that ‘assisting labour’ could be found in various sectors of the commercialized economy of the Dutch Republic. It points at the significance of unpaid work for both the family enterprise as well as the local economy. It is emphasized that, contrary to what is often believed, marriage opened up opportunities for women to be economically active.

Keywords::

• unpaid work
• women
• Holland
• 1600–1800
• urban economy

Acknowledgements

The research presented here is part of the research project ‘Women's work in the early modern Northern Netherlands’, that was funded by ‘Stichting Vrienden van het IISG’, Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and ‘Stichting Professor Van Winterfonds’ and was carried out at the International Institute of Social History. Main publications of the project include Van Dekken, 2009; Van den Heuvel, 2007; Van Nederveen Meerkerk, 2007; Schmidt, 2008; Schmidt, 2009a; Schmidt & Van Nederveen Meerk, 2012. This article builds upon Schmidt 2009b. I thank Lex Heerma van Voss and the two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper.