Trabajo - History Lab

The money changer and his wife

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:30:26 +0000

In the new bourgeois societies, women were a fundamental support for their husbands in the task of collecting and accumulating money. They took part in the accounting of their husbands’ businesses and, in many cases, were in demand as accountants by merchant houses, accustomed as they were to the control of account books. Bourgeois women, without forgetting their role as mothers and wives, developed an economic-administrative activity acting on behalf of their husbands, but also when they were widowed or took over the inheritance of a prematurely deceased father. They handled rents and lent money in a historical phase in which money was an instrument for the accumulation of wealth.

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Seasonality of work by sex. S’Estorell, 1658-1673

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:48 +0000

The demand for agricultural wage labour was highly seasonal, limiting the possibilities of converting it into a regular source of income. The development of agrarian capitalism contributed to this, which led to a productive specialisation in which the participation of women was lower than in the manufacturing and service sectors. The s’Estorell estate was located in the parish of Binissalem, at the foot of the Tramontana mountain range, and was the largest estate in the municipality and one of the ten most profitable on the island, with a valuation of 52,000 pounds according to the land registry of 1685. It covered 520 hectares, occupying the Almandrá valley up to the first peaks of the mountain range in the villages of Alaró and Selva. The work roles assigned to men and women could be broken when the concurrence of different work demands for different tasks in the same season demanded it. From September to January, female and child labour was absorbed in its entirety by the carob harvest (September) and later for the olive harvest (October-January). Once the olive season was over, women joined in January or February the spring weeding for cereals, generally in April and May. On the other hand, the men’s work began in August with the clearing of the olive groves (August-October) and continued from November to January with the digging of the olive trees, which was interspersed with the digging of the wheat fields. In February they began pruning the olive trees (February-April) and then grafting the olive trees (May). In summer, the demand for agricultural labour was concentrated on harvesting, although some labour was also assigned to forestry activities such as charcoal production. Seasonality was, however, a notable anomaly. Around 44% of the working days were contributed by labourers and 56% by day labourers. Female labour accounted for 75% of the working days, male labourers for 17% and child labour was absent, at least in the account books.

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Average ages of servant boys and girls in the advertisements of the Diario de Barcelona (1795-1849)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:36 +0000

The graph shows the evolution of the age of access to the labour market for child servants between the end of the Ancien Régime and the beginning of the industrial economy. The spatial scope situates us in Barcelona, and the periods covered have “gaps” of information based on episodes that altered the sources, such as the War of Independence. The author points out that during the period between 1795 and 1850, the variation in age was a response to the work to be carried out by the children: while girls between 9 and 10 years of age began to work as nannies, boys who began to work at that age were employed as footmen. However, the age of majority was between 13 and 14 for girls and 14 and 15 for boys. The physical development of adolescence allowed them to carry out harder and heavier work in the service they performed. After the end of the Ancien Régime, the ages of access to work were not affected, showing this resource as an example of continuity in socio-economic practices.

The post Average ages of servant boys and girls in the advertisements of the Diario de Barcelona (1795-1849) first appeared on History Lab.

Number of people and days of work contracted in S’Estorell, between 1658-1659 and 1672-1673.

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:02 +0000

The demand for agricultural wage labour was highly seasonal, limiting the possibilities of converting it into a regular source of income. The development of agrarian capitalism contributed to this, which led to a productive specialisation in which the participation of women was lower than in the manufacturing and service sectors. The S’Estorell estate was located in the parish of Binissalem, at the foot of the Tramontana mountain range, and was the largest estate in the municipality and one of the ten most profitable on the island, with a valuation of 52,000 pounds according to the land registry of 1685. It covered 520 hectares, occupying the valley of Almandrá up to the first peaks of the mountain range in the villages of Alaró and Selva. For the exploitation of the estate, a fixed and daily labour force was hired, where the choice of workers was in the hands of the owner and the administrator, who relied on information provided by people they trusted in the nearby villages. This type of agreement was made through women who organised the gangs in the villages, while for the different tasks, contracts were made through the intermediary of foremen. Other matters, such as harvesting contracts, were offered to the highest bidder in the town square. On average, 29 labourers were hired each year, working 148 days: this accounted for 22% of the people hired and 40% of the working days. These labourers carried out a wide variety of tasks: ploughing fields, working in vineyards and orchards, making oil and tending livestock.

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Contractual modalities of the labour force in S’Estorell, 1658-1673, 1674-1675 and 1677-1680

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:02 +0000

The demand for agricultural wage labour was highly seasonal, limiting the possibilities of converting it into a regular source of income. The development of agrarian capitalism contributed to this, which led to a productive specialisation in which the participation of women was lower than in the manufacturing and service sectors. The S’Estorell estate was located in the parish of Binissalem, at the foot of the Tramontana mountain range, and was the largest estate in the municipality and one of the ten most profitable on the island, with a valuation of 52,000 pounds according to the land registry of 1685. It covered 520 hectares, occupying the Almandrá valley up to the first peaks of the mountain range in the villages of Alaró and Selva. The labour contracts for day labourers took on different modalities according to technical and social considerations through different contractual modalities: piecework, daily contracts or day labour. The daily wage contract was clearly the dominant type of contract for all work: 81% of expenditure and 88% of working days were spent on skilled work (grafting olives or pruning vines) or unskilled work (olive picking, digging, etc.). Monthly contracting represented 3.4% of expenditure and 3.9% of total wages. This modality consisted of giving a team of labourers the task of digging or digging for a few months, whose salary was equivalent to that of a farm labourer (35-40 salaries per month). However, the account books do not specify whether they were provided with food. On the other hand, piece-rate contracts represented 15.7% of the expenditure and 6.3% of the number of working days, where women are rarely hired in this modality: 0.1% in terms of expenditure and number of working days. Finally, daily contracts were predominant, while piecework contracts accounted for a small proportion of the number of persons and wages contracted.

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Distribution of day labourers by work and sex. S’Estorell, 1658-1673, 1674-1675 and 1677-1680

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:02 +0000

The demand for agricultural wage labour was highly seasonal, limiting the possibilities of converting it into a regular source of income. The development of agrarian capitalism contributed to this, which led to a productive specialisation in which the participation of women was lower than in the manufacturing and service sectors. The S’Estorell estate was located in the parish of Binissalem, at the foot of the Tramontana mountain range, and was the largest estate in the municipality and one of the ten most profitable on the island, with a valuation of 52,000 pounds according to the land registry of 1685. It covered 520 hectares, occupying the valley of Almandrá up to the first peaks of the mountain range in the villages of Alaró and Selva. The olive grove absorbed practically 90% of the daily wage labour, followed at a great distance by the cultivation of cereals (6.8%) and work in orchards or vineyards (1.8%). These tasks were carried out 69.8% by women, 20.5% by adult men and 9.75% by children. In this sense, the feminisation of day labour was very high, although unevenly distributed between tasks and crops. Female and child labour was almost entirely devoted to olive and carob harvesting, with hardly any participation in soil maintenance work. The male labour force, however, was hired for the more specialised work in the canopy of the olive groves and to plough carob trees, but also for unskilled work in the olive groves, such as weeding. In the harvest, however, female workers accounted for half of the workforce, although in a smaller proportion in terms of the number of days worked (44%).

The post Distribution of day labourers by work and sex. S’Estorell, 1658-1673, 1674-1675 and 1677-1680 first appeared on History Lab.

Wage ratios between labourers and the gender gap in the estates of S’Estorell and Son Costa (1658-1680)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:02 +0000

In recent years, there has been an extensive historiographical debate on women’s participation in rural professional markets and on the wage gap between men and women before 1800. At the same time, there is also no consensus on the wage share of farm household income. However, wage studies have shown that women were paid significantly less than men for the same work. This gap persisted throughout the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, although it narrowed moderately during periods of intense labour demand. The S’Estorell estate was located in the parish of Binissalem, at the foot of the Tramontana mountain range, and was the largest estate in the municipality and one of the ten most profitable on the island, with a valuation of 52,000 pounds according to the land registry of 1685. It covered 520 hectares, occupying the valley of Almandrá up to the first peaks of the mountain range in the villages of Alaró and Selva. In the mid-17th century, on the Safortesa estate, salaries were paid in cash, in current money or in kind when they were of a mixed nature. In some years, wages were paid in kind, in wheat at the request of the labourers. Payments for extra work were recorded separately from the agreed wage. On the other hand, the tasks of grafting and pruning were considered the most skilled, as both were paid with a mixed wage consisting of a monetary wage and a supplement in kind called companatge (condumio), consisting of a casserole with vegetables, accompanied by salted fish or cheese, wine, oil and bread. The master was paid 6-8 salaries a day, depending on the type of tree; his assistants received 4 salaries a day. The cost of companatge was 1.5 sueldos/day in the above-mentioned years. In the middle years of the 17th century, pruning was not as important as it became in later periods, when the olive trees were mature and their yield depended on more energetic pruning. The wage in this case was 51% lower than for grafting and 29-39% higher than for digging the roots. However, the range of women’s wages was narrower: seasonal workers received a mixed monthly wage, part in money and part in oil, plus other supplements such as accommodation, firewood, water and transport to and from their residence to the farm. The wage for picking olives was 20% higher than the one for digging in the pedios. In short, the wage gap for similar work (digging cereals) in the highlands and plains was still very high, with women’s wages representing less than 40% of men’s, figures very similar to those of the mid-16th century.

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Labour force in cotton spinning in Catalonia in 1842 according to P. Madoz

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:28:52 +0000

In the wool-producing villages of central Catalonia, the importance of women’s work was very significant. In 1763, in Sallent, 14 women and five men were needed to run a loom. In Castellterçol, wool provided work for 2,300 people, 2,030 of whom were women. Based on the looms declared in the comarca of Bages and the women needed to run them, according to data from the Floridablanca Census, 57.3% and 86% of the women were involved in spinning. Thanks to various reports at the end of the 18th century, many productive activities – both in craft and agricultural areas – were carried out by women, whose labour force could grow and shrink depending on the demand for products. However, the mechanisation of cotton spinning and weaving was significantly reduced by eliminating the manual spinning that took up more labour. Madoz, in his Diccionario, provides a series of data on the textile industry in 1842, giving information on the sex of the workers. Women were in the majority in cotton spinning in Catalonia (61.6%), followed by children of both sexes (33%) and the marginal role of men (5.3%). However, it does not seem that each spinner worked at home and reproduced a proto-industrial model, but rather that the manufacturers tended to concentrate a few machines on the premises: the berguedanas.

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The history of women in the Prado Museum. Educational guide

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:27:41 +0000

According to the presentation made by the Museo del Prado itself, the Didactic Guide is based on the need to promote the association of museums and educational institutions to create joint strategies to overcome gender inequalities through a critical approach to the history and theories of art. The project is part of “Didactics 2.0 Museums in Feminine”, a project that is the result of joint work between a team from the Feminist Research Institute of the Complutense University of Madrid, the e-Women Association and the teams from the Museums participating in the project: Museo del Prado, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Museo del Traje and Museo Nacional de Cerámica González Martí. The itineraries prepared by Antonia Fernández Valencia, Marián López Fernández Cao and Asunción Bernárdez Rodal address two basic themes: Women and power and Women’s jobs. According to these authors, although they are clearly related to each other, we can say that they have a profoundly complementary character from a social point of view, since the first one basically includes the works and biographies of women from royal and noble houses, while the second one, even including some examples of women from these groups due to their political activity, focuses essentially on the works of women from the middle and working classes. Both itineraries choose different works that put us in contact with different aspects of women in history and can lead us in turn to different themes of the History of Spain in the Modern Age. They are divided into several blocks: Discourse on motherhood, devotion, power and women’s knowledge; Queens and regents in Hapsburg Spain; Our daily work; Family portraits; and Women with their own name. With a clear methodology in terms of objectives and content, as well as the keys to analysis that are of most interest, in each section there is a section of proposed activities and complementary activities for students. And at the end, a series of appendices are added which deal with aspects related to the portraits, questioning the social situation or abounding in lines of conceptual work which can be expanded on later by resorting to other primary sources or historiography.

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Women’s lives through ceramics and sumptuary arts

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:27:41 +0000

Didactic guide that aims to provide work material for teachers and students interested in opening up new avenues of reflection based on active participation and critical questioning of the history and theories of art with the inclusion of the gender perspective. From the collections of the Museo Nacional de Cerámica Gonzalez Martí, which houses a series of objects that refer us to different spheres of artistic reflection and cultural production, the aim is to raise questions about gender equality. Objects that speak to us from the power of accumulation and wealth to different forms of reproduction of everyday life and care, from the most intimate spheres to the presence of the public sphere. The itinerary proposed by the authors – Asunción Bernardez Rodal, Antonia Fernández Valencia and Marián López Fernández Cao – responds to the need to give greater visibility to women’s work and their participation in both material and symbolic life throughout history. The itinerary we propose has two lines of development: on the one hand, it aims to highlight the importance of women in artistic creation in general and in ceramics in particular, questioning above all the traditional role of women in art, which has been above all that of being models for artists. Secondly, the analysis of social space as significant places where gender relations are expressed. Although the chronological approach of the guide is long-term, the Modern Age has an important presence. The project is part of “Didactics 2.0 Museums in Feminine”, a project that is the result of joint work between a team from the Feminist Research Institute of the Complutense University of Madrid, the e-Women Association and the teams from the museums participating in the project: Museo del Prado, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Museo del Traje and Museo Nacional de Cerámica González Martí

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