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This paper uses microdata assembled from a collection of family monographs to examine female work among rural households in interwar Italy. It finds that female employment in agriculture was very high (approximately 80 percent), which contradicts available estimates from population censuses (50 percent or less). Yet despite the pervasiveness of female work, time use remained extremely segregated by gender—women devoted less than half as many hours as men to paid work, instead specializing in producing services for the family. These results substantiate the calls for caution in interpreting standard labour market indicators, such as labour force participation, in the preindustrial past.

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