The female labour force participation, a matter of supply? a matter of demand? an exercise of reconstruction in a context of poverty, Barcelona, 1930–1950

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse the evolution of employment among a group of women belonging to the poorest section of Barcelona’s working class from the 1930s to the 1950s. According to available – but unreliable – macro statistical data, Francoism witnessed the decline of married women’s participation in the labour force. The working trajectories of this group of women have been reconstructed – reliably – using a new source, the social security contribution records (1921–2004), which has made it possible to correct their activity declaration in Barcelona’s municipal censuses (1930–1950). Thus, these women’s activity rate is analysed from the perspective of the household strategies but also taking into consideration demand-side factors, such as changes in hiring policies among businessmen in the metallurgical industry, where most of the women held jobs during the period.

Keywords:

• Female labour force participation
• Francoism
• Barcelona
• nominative record linkage

Acknowledgements

I thank Jan Kok, Juanjo Romero and Joan Pau Jordà for their comments on the previous version of this paper.

Notes

1. On the activity of female textile workers see: Nicolau (1990), Llonch (1993, 2007); Ferrer (1995); Camps 1998, 2002, 2004); Borderías, Villar, and González-Bagaría (2011); Borderías (2012, 2013); Borderías and Ferrer (2015).

2. According to the National Population Censuses, the rate of female labour force participation in the city of Barcelona had been rising since the beginning of the twentieth century, but stagnated between 1930 and 1970 (at roughly 30%). More specifically, the proportion of married women in the population of working women dropped sharply (from 39.43% in 1930 to 19% in 1970) and the workforce in the industrial sector became increasingly male (the percentage of women fell from 33.24% in 1930 to 19.49% in 1975). These data may be found in Borderías (1993a, pp. 35–38 and tables 3, 6 and 9). According to data from the Sociodemographic Survey of 1991, there was also a fall in the labour force participation rates of women between 25 and 45 years of age in Spain as a whole between 1940 and the mid-1970s (Miret, Alustiza, & Cámara, 2001). The decrease in the participation rates of married women in the labour force during the twentieth century until the mid-1970s also occurred in other southern European countries like Italy and Greece. In contrast, northern Europe – in such places as Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom – and also the United States experienced significant increases in the labour force participation of married women from 1960 (Costa, 2000).

3. See the data in Pinilla (1979, appendix No. 7, tables 189 and 190, pp. 559–560).

4. Other studies find that immigrant women have traditionally occupied the lower strata of the Catalan occupational structure: they have been less common in industry, specifically in the textile sector, and more so in lower value-added areas of the tertiary sector, such as in domestic service (Llonch, 1994; López Guallar, 2004; Solé, 1981). In 1930, 65.64% of the women who worked as domestic servants in the city of Barcelona were non-Catalan immigrants (Borrell, 2016, p. 79).

5. The marriage bar was not adopted in the Catalan textile industry.

6. After the civil war, the Spanish working class lost 50% of its purchasing power and in 1950 per capita income was still 15% lower than in 1929 (Vilar, 2009, pp. 22–29).

7. For more on the discriminatory legislation against women under Franco, see Ruiz Franco (2003, 2007); Scanlon (1976); Telo (1986). For the consequences of applying the marriage bar in the case of the telecommunications company Telefónica, see Borderías (1993a).

8. In comparison to the 43% female literacy rate in the city of Barcelona in the early twentieth century (according to data from the National Population Census of 1900).

9. The farm crisis, due to the phylloxera plague that occurred in the last quarter of the nineteenth century in the Catalan countryside, drove migration to Barcelona (Recaño, 1989 quoted by López Gay, 2008, p. 150). The urban migration from cities that had traditionally sent people to the Catalan capital was also significant. Catalans, as well as migrants from Valencia and Aragon, were largely skilled workers and artisans attracted by the great industrial growth of the city (Oyón, Maldonado & Griful, 2001, pp. 52–60). Later, the migration from Murcia and Andalusia was from the farming and mining crisis areas where the people were mainly unskilled workers attracted by the second industrial revolution, and, especially, by the large public works executed in the city during Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship (Oyón, Maldonado & Griful, 2001; Tatjer, 1980).

10. This is very low compared to the first generation as well as to the 71.90% general female literacy rate in the city in 1930 and 64.20% in 1950 (according to data from the National Population Censuses of 1930 and 1950).

11. In 1930, the illiteracy rates for women in the western part of Andalusia ranged between 60% and 69% (Capel, 1982, pp. 376–377).

12. During Francoism, the high rates of school absenteeism among girls led to the gradual growth in the proportion of illiterate women in the total population of the illiterate. By the early 1970s, there were more than twice as many illiterate women than illiterate men (Vilanova & Moreno, 1992, pp. 302–337).

13. In Catalonia, the final number of offspring among the women born in the period 1916–1944 rose from 1.67 to 2.30, though in Spain it decreased slightly from 2.61 to 2.59 (see data in Cabré, 1999, p. 67).

14. One case, probably among the most extreme, is M.M.R. Born in 1918 in La Rábita (Granada), she lived in a slum in the neighbourhood called Gas for at least 25 years.

15. In Sant Martí de Provençals there were 429 metallurgical companies in 1933. By 1963 there were 1826, or 26% of the total number of companies in the district (Nadal & Tafunell, 1992, p. 213).

16. A good account of the under-reporting of women’s work in the official statistical sources can be found in Borderías et al. (2011). On the reasons for under-reporting see Humphries & Sarasúa (2012).

17. Until 1946, it was not mandatory to report children under 16 years old to social security even though the legal working age was 14 years of age. Therefore, it may be that there were more than these 727 women working in HGB during this period. However, the list of workers drawn from the company records, partially preserved since 1940, provides no other names.

18. The first of these schemes is the Retiro Obrero Obligatorio (Mandatory Working Class Retirement), the first pension system in Spain, in force between 1921 and 1939. The second is the Seguro Obligatorio de Vejez e Invalidez (Compulsory Old Age and Disability Insurance), in force from 1940 to 1959 and the third, Social Security, a comprehensive social support system (pensions, disability, unemployment), was created in 1960.

19. All their data were entered into the database, including the data of the other members of the same household (sex, age, birthplace, marital status, literacy, occupation, legal length of residence in the city, parenthood with the head of the household) as well as the data related to the residence itself (street, number, neighbourhood, etc.).

20. For instance, in the factories for the manufacture of ‘mantecados’ (a Christmas sweet made of flour, almonds and lard) in Estepa (Seville), women were already working without a signed contract in the early twentieth century, a practice which was maintained during Francoism (Téllez, 2002).

21. See the example of the Personal_Id 27 in Figure 1.

22. This has also been observed in other Catalan localities and among the women working at the textile firm La España Industrial (Borderías, 2012; Borderías et al., 2011).

23. While it is true that the signature on the form does not necessarily correspond to the person who completed it, examination of the forms supports this generally being the case and that this approach is therefore a sound one.

24. This was also noted by August (1994). Indeed, I have found that the declarations of employment of all the women in the household were amended by male heads of household when they signed the forms, changing what was clearly a paid job to that of a ‘housewife’ (‘sus labores’). This is the case with J.P.H., 44 years old, and her daughter of 19, who declared themselves as ‘machine operators’ in 1950, but whose husband wrote over these entries, putting ‘housewife’. The reconstructed working life of J.P.H. indicates that her declaration in the census refers to her job as a seamstress operating a sewing machine.

25. The decline in families’ economic resources typically affects the schooling of girls more than that of boys, as girls more often end their education to enter the labour market early and thereby keep the boys from having their education affected by recession (Borderías, 1991, p. 480).

26. The same occurred in other sectors, including some in which the marriage bar was compulsory. In the textile and clothing industry in Madrid, however, the norm did not involve permanently leaving the factory. Women left the job when they married to collect their ‘dowry’ but they were re-hired immediately by the same firm or by another one (Díaz Sánchez, 2003, p. 230).

27. Thus, for example, in 1921, the Torres i Bordas Company (Barcelona) advertised a cutting and stamping press stating that ‘generally young girls worked as operators’ of these machines (La Industria Metalúrgica, May 1921, 2: 10).

28. Thus, as an example, in the metal box company G. de Andreis-Metalgraf Española (Badalona) ‘a man, earning 9.5 pesetas per day, produced 6,000 cover caps; and now, a woman, with a 5 pesetas daily wage, produces 9,000, earning a one peseta production bonus’. Moreover, ‘in the automatic capping machines three women produced 6,000 boxes […] now two women produce 9,000’ (Solidaridad Obrera, 22 October 1935, 1098: 6).

29. According to the 1936 Metallurgical Collective Bargaining Agreement (Bases de Trabajo de la Metalurgia, provincia de Barcelona) and the 1938–1946 National Iron and Steel Industry Labour Regulations (Reglamentaciones Nacionales para la Industria Siderometalúrgica).

30. There are no available data on the age distribution of the male workforce in the metallurgical industry in Barcelona after 1940. However, in the specific case of the firm HGB, the owners used mechanisation to feminise and erode the labour conditions in the mechanical processing phase of small- and medium-sized tin boxes from the late nineteenth century. The firm did not hire unskilled young male workers in significant numbers until the 1950s and 1960s, when the jobs in the areas where the male workforce predominated were mechanised.

31. For more information on the characteristics of these women’s labour trajectories see Villar (2016).

32. In 1930, the average number of people per household in this group was 5.26, which is higher than the Barcelona average (4.4), and 42.16% of the homes had more than six people living together. By 1950, the average number of household members rose to 6.21 and the percentage of homes with six or more residents climbed to 52%.

33. This figure is higher than the Barcelona average in 1930, which was 24.95% according to the census data of a random sample of 1000 families. This sample forms part of the database compiled for the projects: La reconstrucción de la actividad económica en la Cataluña contemporánea (siglos XIX–XX): trabajo y movilidad social (HAR2008-01998/HIST) (The Reconstruction of Economic Activity in Catalonia: Work and Social Mobility) and La reconstrucción de la actividad económica en la Cataluña contemporánea (siglos XIX–XX): trabajo, demografía y economía familiares (HAR2011-26951) (The Reconstruction of Economic Activity in Catalonia: Work, Demography and Family Economies). PI: Cristina Borderías.

34. According to the anarchist newspaper Solidaridad Obrera (CNT), which initiated a campaign to denounce the abusive rents in the city in October 1930, rent could represent 20–25% of a worker’s wage, something that with rising prices made ‘the economic situation of those people forced to live with very low pay for their work’ very difficult (Solidaridad Obrera, 19 October 1930, 41: 8 ). In fact, the CNT encouraged a rent strike in Barcelona in 1931 (Rider, 1986).

35. During the first third of the twentieth century, married women in the Basque Country who were displaced from a male-dominated labour market – mining and steel – turned to paid lodgers as a critical source of income as an alternative to working in industry (Pérez-Fuentes, 2003).