Le surplus urbain des femmes en France préindustrielle et le rôle de la domesticité

`All masters discourage the marrying of their male servants, and admit not by any means the marriage of the female': Domestic Service and Celibacy in Western Europe from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century

“…70 In her view, from the eighteenth century onwards, the growing female migration to the towns negatively affected matrimonial market conditions: 'celibacy was too often the lot of these young populations drawn to town by economic crisis from their villages where they could no longer earn their subsistence. In such conditions, the transitory stage of domestic Spinsters without maids Bachelors without servants service .…”

Les solitudes urbaines. Structures et parcours dans la Genève des années 1816-1843

“…Le nombre élevé de femmes servant les autres reflète l'importance de ce que Peter Laslett a appelé le « life cycle service », qui est « a period of service in the household of another which provided something of a hiatus between leaving home and establishing one's own household » (Wall, 1983, 458). Loin de décroître durant le siècle de l'industrialisation, le phénomène domestique se développe durant le 19 e et, partout dans les villes européennes, les servantes sont massivement jeunes, immigrées, femmes et célibataires (Dauphin, 1991, 520 ;Fauve-Chamoux, 1998). Habituellement, elles expérimentaient une réelle transition dans leur cours de vie, pour ne pas dire une rupture : rupture avec leur environnement et communauté d'origine, leur famille, etc.…”

Routine Infanticide in the West 1500–1800

“…Very soon after, however, demographers began to become interested in sex‐ratios in the wider population. Antoinette Fauve‐Chamoux underscored how early modern cities seemed to offer opportunities for females in search of work from adolescence onwards, although a table (p.367) underscored a considerable surplus of males among small children below the age of 5 . The same year, demographers directed by Virpi Lummaa were trying to tease out what they called the ‘optimal sex ratio’ that would best suit the environmental conditions of pre‐industrial Finland.…”

“…Antoinette Fauve‐Chamoux, ‘Le surplus urbain des femmes en France préindustrielle’, Population , 1–2, 1998, 359–78.…”

“…Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux underscored how early modern cities seemed to offer opportunities for females in search of work from adolescence onwards, although a table (p.367) underscored a considerable surplus of males among small children below the age of 5. 18 The same year, demographers directed by Virpi Lummaa were trying to tease out what they called the 'optimal sex ratio' that would best suit the environmental conditions of pre-industrial Finland. They were searching for some biological mechanism by which parents could adjust the sex composition of their offspring, only to conclude that it was difficult to find.…”