When women disappear from the labour market: occupational status of Dutch women at marriage in a modernizing society, 1865–1922

Abstract

Between 1865 and 1922 the labour force participation of women at marriage dropped considerably in the Netherlands. At the same time, girls' educational participation increased and egalitarian gender values started to spread. We expect these developments to have affected the occupational status of those women who stayed in the labour market. Using a large dataset of Dutch marriages and municipal-level information on female labour force participation, educational participation, and an indicator of gender values, we show that women's status dropped until around 1885 and then started to rise. The retreat of women from the labour market coincided with a decline in the status of the women who remained, whereas, especially after 1900, the increasing educational participation of girls and the dissemination of egalitarian gender values counteracted this trend by causing women's status to rise.

Keywords::

• female labour force participation
• modernization
• the Netherlands

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the audiences at the 10th Swedish Economic History Meeting, University of Lund, the Interuniversity Research Group on Social Inequality and the Life Course (ISOL) meeting at Utrecht University, 2 October 2013, and the audience of the DIW Berlin Cluster Seminar, 4 December 2013.

Notes

^1. Percentages of girls of school age are difficult to obtain since the age distribution of girls is not known for each year and each municipality.

^2. The GenLias data come from the Regionaal Historisch Centrum Limburg (release 7 June 2006), Historisch Centrum Overijssel (release 7 April 2005), Gelders Archief (release 1 November 2006), Zeeuws Archief (release 28 June 2004), Groninger Archieven (release 16 March 2007), and Drents Archief (release August 2010).

^3. We also ran the analyses with a categorical measure of father's and mother's status. Those fathers and mothers without occupational information comprised one category. The results were very similar, but we prefer using the continuous scale because this enables us to use the standardized HISCAM scale and decreases the number of interaction terms.

^4. The following school types are included: Gymnasium, Burger Avondschool, Hogere Burgerschool, Middelbare Meisjesschool, Teken- en ambachtsscholen, Vakscholen, Kookscholen, Kunstscholen, Hogere Burgerschool-Lyceum.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was written under the European Research Council, Advanced Investigator's Grant, no. 230279: Towards Open Societies? Trends, variations and driving forces of intergenerational social mobility in Europe over the past three centuries. See also www.towardsopensocieties.org.