Reconsidering the Southern European Model: Marital Status, Women's Work and Labour Relations in mid-Eighteenth-century Portugal

TLDR: The authors showed that neither marriage nor widowhood prevented women from participating in the labour market of Portugal in the mid-eighteenth-century, arguing that marriage provided women with the resources they needed to work in various capacities in all economic sectors.

Abstract: espanolDesafiando la historiografia actual sobre las diferencias entre la participacion femenina en los mercados laborales del noroeste y del sur de Europa y su impacto en el desarrollo economico, este articulo muestra que ni el matrimonio ni la viudez impidieron las mujeres de participaren en la economia portuguesa de mediados del XVIII. El matrimonio proporciono a las mujeres los recursos necesarios para trabajar en en diversas capacidades. Este articulo sostiene tambien que las solteras tenian un incentivo para trabajar, y lo hacian como asalariadas. Finalmente, la comparacion de nuestros datos de ocupaciones femeninas con otros casos europeos muestra que la literatura requiere una revision y el desarrollo de una imagen mas matizada de la division norte-sur. EnglishChallenging current ideas in mainstream scholarship on differences between female labour force participation in southern and north-western Europe and their impact on economic development, this article shows that in Portugal, neither marriage nor widowhood prevented women from participating in the labour market of mid-eighteenth-century. Our research demonstrates that marriage provided women with the resources they needed to work in various capacities in all economic sectors. This article also argues that single Portuguese women had an incentive to work and did so mostly as wage earners. Finally, the comparison of our dataset on female occupations from tax records with other European cases calls for a revision of the literature and the development of a more nuanced picture of the north-south divide.