Female farming: persistence and economic performance of Swedish widows from 1730–1860

Abstract

This article examines the economic consequences of widowhood and the possibility of maintaining female-managed farms in a predominantly male world. A unique dataset is exploited to investigate the productivity of female-headed households in preindustrial Sweden. The main source material is tithe payment rolls maintained by parish priests, which reflect fluctuations and long-term trends in the annual economic output of more than 2,000 individual farms. No evidence was found that farm management conducted by widows was dissolved by male relatives or neighbours. Farm management by widows was in many cases a temporary arrangement, especially on manorial land, where landlords did not accept female farmers. But among freeholders and crown tenants, widows often refrained from remarriage and continued as farm heads. As for production, farms managed by widows performed slightly better than farms managed by men during the first few years after a takeover. This result levelled out over time and farms managed by long-term widows show production results almost equal to farms run by men.

Keywords:

• widows
• farm production
• tenants
• freeholders
• seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
• Sweden

Acknowledgements

This is a study within the research project ‘Work, production and agrarian transformation 1700–1860’, financed by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet).

Notes

^1. For an overview of tithes and tithes research, see Le Roy Ladurie and Goy (1982).

^2. For a more thorough presentation, see Olsson and Svensson (2010).

^3. Demand for and supply of occupational skills will be discussed in the next section.

^4. The ideology of consensual marriage was initially a papal revolution (1054–1150) challenging prevailing customs of arranged marriages, but its effect on marriage patterns in northwestern Europe can be established from the late middle ages.

^5. This early literacy campaign, prescribed in the Church Law of 1686, aimed at the ability to read, but not at the ability to write.

^6. The phenomenon seems to have been unique for early modern Sweden and for nineteenth century United States.

^7. For a more complete discussion of what constituted and explained agricultural growth in southern Sweden, see Olsson and Svensson (2010).