On the Market: Women's Work, Local Industry, and Nuptiality in Derbyshire, 1881-1911

Emma Diduch, University of Cambridge

Local industries and sex ratios affect the ‘supply’ side of marriage, in terms of the pool of potential spouses. Different occupational structures also affect demand for marriage, if wage levels either allowed couples to set up households or allowed individuals to remain independent. Demand for marriage could also be conditional on preferences for a particular type of partner – whether of the right age, occupation, or social class. Using linked census and civil registration data from Derbyshire, I analyse patterns in first marriages based on individual-level observations of occupation and age at marriage instead of relying on aggregate analysis of nuptiality based on estimates of labour force participation and age at marriage by district. If an unbalanced sex ratio in textile districts affected nuptiality, it is important to know whether it was the textile workers themselves who either changed the timing of marriage or did not marry at all. The linked census dataset also allows me to explore associations between a woman’s father’s occupation, her own work as a child and young adult, and, if she married, the occupation of her husband. I use a split-population cure model to simultaneously analyse the timing of marriage and the likelihood of staying single. The interaction between a woman's occupation and her place of residence before marriage reveals restricted access to or appetite for marriage among several occupational groups, including dressmakers and women in white-collar occupations. In contrast, differences in nuptiality between textile workers and domestic servants seem to have been more rooted in different geographic distributions and access to potential spouses. It is notable that textile employment did not encourage women to substantially delay marriage; on the contrary, textile workers in Derbyshire seem to have been advantaged on the marriage market in some districts.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 81. Opening up Opportunity: Economic and Societal Change