This article uses a new source of data, namely the full sample of the 1881 census enumerators' books, to study female labour force participation. It examines the interaction between labour demand and supply to gauge their relative importance in determining female labour force participation rates (LFPRs). Three main findings emerge from the current article. First, there is an unmistakable link between labour demand and female LFPRs. High levels of female labour force participation are found in areas where there were industries with ample demand for female labour. Second, supply-side factors also had clear effects on female LFPRs. However, they can only operate within the limit imposed by the demand-side conditions. Third, female migration did not fundamentally change the spatial patterns of female LFPRs. Overall, this article argues that the demand side of the female labour market was the most important factor in determining female LFPRs in nineteenth-century England and Wales.
Women played a vital role in British industrialization. However, studies of women’s work are often hindered by data limitation. The British censuses provide an unparalleled opportunity to study women’s work and its impact systematically. However, the reliability of the census recording of female employment is still under debate. This articles aims to contribute to this ongoing debate by examining a particular census recording concerning married women who were supposedly working with their husbands, that is “occupation’s wife.” By analyzing a new source of big data, namely 100 percent sample of Census Enumerators’ Books and published census reports, this article shows that the recording of “occupation’s wife” was not informative about the level of married women’s labor in the form of working together with their husbands in the same trade. Given the important fact that married women recorded as “occupation’s wife” constituted the largest group of married women with any occupational titles in the censuses, the results presented in this article suggest a reassessment of some of the empirical foundations in the studies of married women’s work.
This article uses the full sample of the 1851 census enumerators’ books (CEBs) to revisit and reanalyse the well‐known phenomenon of female kin servants in the British census. We find that the recording of female kin servants points to three distinct possibilities – day servants, domestic work at relatives’ homes, and work at relatives’ homes as part of the family business unit. Accordingly, we argue that female kin servants offer a rare opportunity to look into the interaction between gendered work, household economy, and market economy, and they should be considered as much in the labour force as classic servants. We further offer tentative methods to revise the number of female domestic servants. Our revision suggests that domestic service probably employed more women than manufacturing activities of all sorts put together. It highlights the limited impacts of industrialization on most women's work experiences as well as traditional sector's importance for women's employment, even as late as the mid‐nineteenth century.
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