Female Labour Force Participation and Late 19th Century Central European Industrialisation: Evidence from Upper Silesia

Aleksandra Dul, University of Cambridge

In the late 19th century Upper Silesia, a region situated in the south east corner of the German Empire, was experiencing rapid industrialisation and urbanisation which gave impulse to the emergence of a new modern society. Traditionally, Silesian families observed the strict division of male and female roles. The established partnership model included men engaging in demanding physical labour and women focusing on maintaining the household and child-rearing. This paper looks into the question of whether the incentive of earning additional income was stronger than the pressure to adhere to cultural norms – whether the peculiar environment of a rapidly growing, young industrial economy with its forming migrant communities was a factor in the widening of female labour force participation. The paper takes a quantitative approach based on analysing demographic and occupational censuses, and confronting them with a body of civil marriage certificates spanning from 1875 to 1910. To contextualise the observed patterns, it looks into several associated social phenomena. First, it traces possible reasons behind migrating upon marriage as opposed to marrying locally. Then, it looks into social mobility by marriage. Third, it measures the influence of women’s family background in their initial professional choices, potentially leading to the early closure of paths of professional development. Together, the results help recreate life cycle patterns and social determinants of the scale and character of female labour force participation.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 75. Women at Work