Women, Work, and the Family Economy: A Study on the Determinants of Female Gainful Employment in Sweden, 1880-1910

Abstract: Today, Swedish women have one of the highest participation rates. In the nineteenth century, however, virtually no married women were recorded as working. Their participation rates started rising around the turn-of-the-century. Using full-count microdata from Swedish national censuses for the period 1880-1910, this paper aims to estimate the effects of various determinants on female labour supply. Hypotheses based on economic theories on the demand and supply of female labour are tested. The results indicate that the number of children is positively associated with working for never-married and widowed women. For married women, children had a negative impact. Both married and widowed women were more likely to work if they had at least one servant in the household. Moreover, the impact of a working spouse on a married woman’s participation varied by the spouse’s occupation; wives of production workers were more likely to work. Structural transformation changed the impact of local economies on women’s work. Clerical work arose as an important employer for single women, while married women were negatively impacted by industrialisation in terms of likelihood to be employed. The relative price of butter over rye - a proxy for female-to-male wages - had large positive impacts on single and divorced women, but only small impact on married women. Overall, this study concludes that differences in marital status and family composition created differential experiences for women, which should be taken into account in economic theories.