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Reconsidering Women's LaborForce Participation Rates inEighteenth-Century TurinBeatrice Zucca Michelettoa

a Groupe de Recherche d'Histoire (GRHIS), Universitéde Rouen Rue Lavoisier, Mont Saint Aignan 76821,France

To cite this article: Beatrice Zucca Micheletto (2013) Reconsidering Women's LaborForce Participation Rates in Eighteenth-Century Turin, Feminist Economics, 19:4,200-223, DOI: 10.1080/13545701.2013.842283

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Feminist Economics, 2013Vol. 19, No. 4, 200–223, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2013.842283

R EC ONSIDERING W OMEN’S L A BOR F OR CE

PARTICIPATION R AT ES IN

EIGHTEENTH -CENTU R Y T UR IN

Beatrice Zucca Micheletto

ABSTRACT

This study presents initial estimates of women’s labor force participation ratesin preindustrial Turin. According to the population census of 1802, marriedwomen’s participation rates were conspicuously low compared with the rates ofunmarried women and widows and therefore deserve additional investigation.First, the study points out the value of a methodological approach based onthe use of nonprincipal breadwinner-oriented sources, such as registers ofapplicants for poor relief. Here, all members of the family were encouraged todeclare their occupations and activities in some detail in order to demonstrateconcrete contribution to the survival of the family. Finally, the study discussesthe occupational patterns of women employed as servants and as artisansand laborers in silk manufacturing. This highlights the crucial role playedby migration flows and by women’s access to skilled or low-qualified jobs indetermining the extent of women’s participation in preindustrial Turin’s labormarket.

KEYWORDS

Female labor force participation, women’s work, male-breadwinner family, labormarket segmentation, economic history, Italy

JEL Codes: J2, N01, N33

INTRODUCTION

The data on women’s wage work in European archival sources areambiguous and complicated. Officials charged with conducting populationcensuses – for military or economic purposes, for example – were alwaysinterested in men’s wage work, and more generally only in the principalbreadwinner’s occupation. The invisibility of women in the sources is ofcourse one of the factors that has long led researchers to undervalue, andeven to completely neglect, women’s presence in the labor market. On theother hand, the nature of women’s wage work and the conditions in which

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they performed both paid and unpaid work were often unclear. Since womenwere obliged to reconcile a paid job with childcare and housekeeping,they frequently worked outside or at the margins of the official labormarket or guilds, and they were therefore underpaid and invisible. Inaddition, conditions of the local labor demand as well as regulations andprohibitions coming from economic actors, such as guilds or politicians,severely constrained women’s access to both education and paid occupations(Carmen Sarasúa 2008). Finally, even when performing skilled and paidwork, women were often not considered real workers, and even paid workwas, as a consequence, scarcely registered by the sources (Jane Humphriesand Carmen Sarasúa 2012). The complicated relationship between women’swork and archival sources constitutes one of the main obstacles to the correctevaluation of historical women’s labor force participation (LFP) rates.

To escape this impasse, it is essential to intensify research activities and toimprove the methodological approaches to the topic, as this study suggests,in accordance with the theoretical framework of the present and previoussymposia (Humphries and Sarasúa 2012). Starting with the populationcensus of Turin carried out in 1802 (also known as the Napoleonic census),this study is a first attempt to describe women’s labor force rates in apreindustrial Italian city. Work on women’s LFP rates in Old Regime Italyis rare: Demographic research has a long and esteemed tradition, as haswomen’s studies, but the two have seldom interacted. Demographers, usingthe Catholic registers of birth, marriage, and burials and the stati delleanime (population surveys conducted for every family by the priests inorder to check if their parishioners took part in the Easter Communionand to collect the tithe1) concentrated on the structure of families, thepresence of co-resident servants, and the age composition of the societies,while they undervalued the occupational data and completely neglected agendered analysis of it. Conversely, students of gender were more involved inqualitative than quantitative research. For these reasons, efforts to evaluatewomen’s participation rates are unusual in Italian historiography. Theexceptions are two studies based on the population census of Florence of1810 (Mirella Scardozzi 1995) and the population survey of four parishes ofBologna in 1796 (Maura Palazzi 1990) to which I refer below.

This contribution will look initially at the Napoleonic census in order tocalculate women’s LFP rates. It discusses the two major factors that affectedthe presence of women in this type of source and in the local labor marketin eighteenth-century Turin: (1) marital status and age, and whether ornot the women had a position as head of the family; (2) three importanteconomic, social, and cultural features of Turin society in the eighteenthcentury, namely the occupational structure, the presence of migrants inthe local labor market, and the crucial role of skill training. Analysis ofindividual women’s marital status, age, and position in the family (wives,children, or head of household) will show that married women’s work and

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children’s work were the most undervalued and that, in some respects, theseare enduring trends, valid also for other Turin population censuses (dated1705 and 1857). Furthermore, the study will demonstrate the importance ofa methodological approach based on the cross-referencing of sources and onthe use of documentation that identifies the economic contribution of othermembers beyond the head of the family or main breadwinner. The secondpurpose of the study is to show how economic, social, and cultural factorscould affect the supply of and demand for women’s work in the local labormarket. More specifically, I will suggest that, although important, women’slife cycle, marital status, and juridical position are not the only pertinentvariables; the analysis of two specific case studies – women’s presence indomestic service, as well as in the production of silk yarns and clothing – willshow that, in eighteenth-century Turin, women’s occupational patterns werealso strongly affected by cultural models and values and by local economicand social phenomena.

STATISTICAL SURVEYS OF THE TURIN POPULATION BEFORE THECENSUS OF 1802

Throughout the eighteenth century, knowledge about the composition ofthe population of the Kingdom of Sardinia2 was considered essential tothe maintenance of public order. Since control over the population wasan important element of domestic policy, from the end of the seventeenthcentury until 1796 the city of Turin developed an independent and annualsystem of population surveys (Pietro Castiglioni 1862; Giovanni Levi 1974).3

Regular censuses had several functions: (1) to ascertain how many menand boys could be recruited into the army if required; (2) to control thepresence of “strangers” – namely, migrants from France, which was by turnally or enemy of the kingdom; (3) to measure the portion of the populationthat the authorities determined were mobile or unruly and needed to bemonitored as a potential threat to contemporary ideas of public order. Itis worth noting that, apart from vagrants, beggars, and people internedin hospitals, this category consisted of servants, apprentices, and laborersof all crafts and of both sexes, since these groups were characterized byhigh turnover rates. The city was organized into sections (isole), and eachheadquarter (capitano di quartiere) managed an isola and registered themembers of all households. Unfortunately, these registers and their datahave by and large been lost; but what has been preserved is a ristretto, adocument summarizing the composition of the population year by year.This source allows the calculation of the percentage of servants, apprentices,and laborers in the women’s urban population throughout the eighteenthcentury; however, it does not provide information about the activity of otherwomen and moreover does not make it possible to set up connections

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between women’s paid work, their marital status, and their age. It can initiatethe computation of women’s LFP rates but not sustain or complete the task.

THE 1802 CENSUS

According to the economist Giuseppe Prato (1906), the population censusof Turin may be the first example of an Italian “regular census, carriedout using the categories of civil status and independently of the Catholicauthorities” (Germana Muttini Conti 1951: 2). The census was conductedat the very beginning of the nineteenth century as a consequence of theannexation of the Kingdom of Sardinia to Napoleonic France. Previously,the registration of populations in cities as well as in villages was underthe control of Catholic authorities or, as was the case for Turin, the localadministration. In contrast, the census of 1802 was part of the larger projectof administrative reform started during the Napoleonic era.4 It was designednot only to facilitate tax collection, but also to establish the rights ofcitizenship and the domicile of inhabitants (Muttini Conti 1951). While inthe past data were collected by headquarters or their staff with the help ofnotaries, the Napoleonic census was carried out directly by the families.As explained in the edict by the mayor of Turin, the owners of houseswere required to complete forms in which they had to declare every familymember living in the house.5 Each person had to state his or her familyname, first name, date of birth, place of birth, job, marital status, floor of thehouse, and duration of the domicile in Turin. Sometimes, in the field titled“remarks” (osservazioni), family members stated their position in relation tothe head of the household (wife, daughter, son, mother, father, etc.), or wecan infer it from name and age. In some cases, it is likely that owners ofthe houses filled the forms for all persons, themselves, according to theirknowledge of the tenant families.

While many of the Turin population census records are lost, theNapoleonic census has been preserved at the Municipal Archives of the cityof Turin.6 It was first studied by the economist Muttini Conti (1951) withinthe framework of a larger research project on Turin and Piedmont. Duringthe 1990s, the census was fully transcribed by a team of researchers andstudents from the Economic History Department of the University of Turin,under the supervision and coordination of Professor Maria Carla Lamberti,and is now available on an Access database.7 The structure of the databasetakes into account the complexity of the source; all available informationwas transcribed. Every individual was entered as a single record with all thepertinent biographical data (name, occupation, date of birth, place of birth,etc.). In addition, another database was set up for families – and connectedto the first by a FAMILY CODE – in order to register data concerning thedomicile (quarter, house, floor). The findings presented in this study are theresult of my explorations of this database. Recently, Maria Carla Lamberti

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(2002a, 2003) presented some innovative findings about men and women’sparticipation in the Turin labor market; nevertheless, until now, there areno studies using this source to measure women’s LFP rates in Turin and todiscuss the variables that affected the visibility of women in censuses.

WOMEN (AND MEN) IN THE CENSUS

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, war and French dominationcompelled many people to leave Turin, although the city continued toaccount for more than 60,000 inhabitants. Compared to Naples, whichat the time had about 320,000 inhabitants, or Rome, which had about136,000 people, Turin was a mid-sized city, comparable with Florence,which at the beginning of the nineteenth century had about 80,000inhabitants, or Bologna, with about 64,000 (Lorenzo Del Panta, MassimoLivi Bacci, Giuliano Pinto, and Eugenio Sonnino 1996). The Napoleoniccensus registered 59,974 people: 30,415 women and 29,494 men (plus 65individuals whose gender was not identified). Table 1 shows the professions,jobs, and status of women ages 15 and over,8 compared to men: 33.3percent of these women recorded a job (in agriculture, crafts, trade andretail, or as an employee or journeyman in different proportions), while 3.1percent declared another activity (student, housewife,9 clergy, conventualmembers); finally, 5.6 percent gave a social condition instead of a profession(beggars, poor, disabled, or living on their income). However, 58 percent ofwomen declared no job, activity, or status. This of course does not mean thatthe half of the adult women did not work, but that we do not know anythingabout their occupation or position in society.

These findings clash with the data presented by Scardozzi concerningthe population census of Florence conducted in 1810. Scardozzi reportedthat “the percentage of women without information is limited. [. . .] Amongwomen aged over 9 years old, for 14 percent information is missing” (1995:134). She also notes that 21 percent of women could be classified ashousewives, while in Turin this was only 1.8 percent. Furthermore, Table 1shows that gender is a crucial variable in the census. Men declared a job ora status more often than women: 75.8 percent of the male population ages15 years and over had a job, 4.9 percent were students, clergy, or conventualmembers, while 6.1 percent gave poor, beggars, or living on their incomeas their status. Only a little more than one-tenth (13.2 percent) of the malepopulation left no record.

However, a more detailed analysis shows that missing data about jobs oractivities were not randomly scattered across the female population, butclustered on specific categories. Three variables played a crucial role inthe likelihood of women reporting a job: (1) their marital status; (2) theireventual position as head of the household; and (3) their age at the time ofthe census. First, the role of marital status is crucial, since in preindustrial

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Table 1 Women and men in the Napoleonic census (1802)

Women ages 15 and over Men ages 15 and over

N % N %

Agriculture 111 0.5 33.3 percent of womendeclared a job

242 1.1 75.8 percent of mendeclared a job

Craft and manufacturing 2,651 12.2 6,525 30.9Trade, retail 722 3.3 2,166 10.3Manual services 3,377 15.5 4,083 19.3Employees, professionals 57 0.3 2,003 9.5Others (artists, etc.) 21 0.1 197 0.9Journeymen 311 1.4 272 1.3Soldiers 0 0 514 2.4Housewives 393 1.8 3.1 percent of women

declared other activities0 0 4.9 percent of men

declared other activitiesStudents 0 0 327 1.5Clergy and conventuals 275 1.3 709 3.4Poor, beggars 698 3.2 5.6 percent of women

declared a status595 2.8 6.1 percent of men

declared a statusLiving of their income 512 2.4 694 3.3Occupation or condition unknown 12,614 58 58 2,796 13.2 13.2Total 21,742 100 100 21,123 100 100

Source : 1802 population census.

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societies, the identity of a woman was not determined by her professionalstatus but by her position in the family as a wife, a widow, or a daughter.Table 2 shows that marriage – and the consequent movement of the womanto the juridical authority of the husband – was really a watershed; notably,only 21.7 percent of the entire group of married women declared a job,against 55.7 percent of unmarried women ages 25 and over and 48.6 percentof widows. On the contrary, the Napoleonic census shows that marital statusdid not play a crucial role for men: more than 72 percent of unmarried menand more than 85 percent of husbands or widowers declared a job.

These relatively low participation rates of married women are suspiciousand deserve additional investigation. The point will be further discussed; atthe moment it is sufficient to note that the rates could either be the productof a real dramatic reduction of married women’s economic activity or theproduct of ideological lenses privileging the male breadwinner and leadingto the undervaluation of the contribution of other family members.

However, in the absence of a male breadwinner, the contribution ofwomen’s paid work is not at all a secondary detail. Indeed, there is agreat difference between women who presented themselves as head ofthe household (capofamiglia) and women who did not. If we take thisvariable into account, the percentages change completely: 53.5 percent offemale heads of household stated a job; only 23.2 percent of other women(daughters, cohabitants, relatives, servants, or apprentices) specified one.

The data clearly highlight that the families presented themselves only byidentifying the head of the household (male or female), who in turn wasalso considered the principal breadwinner, namely the person responsiblefor the material survival and the good reputation of the family.10 Amongworking women heads of household, marital status is still a crucial variable;68 percent of them were widows – women who earned their own livingand needed to demonstrate how they did it “honestly.” On the other hand,

Table 2 Women and men who declared a job in the Napoleoniccensus (1802), according to their marital status

N %

Unmarried women ages 25 and over 1,846 55.7Married women 2,221 21.7Widows 1,787 48.6

Unmarried men ages 25 and over 3,230 72.4Married men 9,499 88.7Widowers 1,045 85.4

Notes: The sample excluded housewives, students, clergy, beggars, andrentiers. Percentages are calculated for each group.Source : 1802 population census.

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among women who lived in a household but were not the household head,the categories most used to clarify their occupational positions were servants,apprentices, or employees of the family firm or the craft shop.

The third factor to be considered is age. Table 3 shows individuals – sonsand daughters of the head of the household – in an age range of 0–35 years.Except for the age cohort in which children are too young to work (upto 6 years old), recorded participation for both girls and boys from 7 to 14years are probably too low and not fully credible, according to other sources.Indeed, this was the age at which children took their first steps into the labormarket. The Ospedale di Carità (Hospice of Charity; the most importantcharitable institution of Turin), for example, accepted the admission ofchildren ages 7 and over when they were initiated into a craft and put intoapprenticeship; in addition, the same institution considered children over14 capable of earning their living. Similarly, the Albergo di Virtù (Hospiceof Virtues; another charitable institution founded by the Duke in orderto provide skilled training for children from poor families) hosted childrenfrom ages 11 to 16 and introduced them to craftwork (Sandra Cavallo 1995).While the labor contribution of children up to 14 years seems to remainhidden, differences between men and women become evident in the adultage cohorts. Daughters age 15 years and over were less encouraged to statetheir occupation than their brothers.

This preliminary analysis suggests that, although the mayor of the citydeclared that the census had to be carried out “with the greatest accuracy”(Muttini Conti 1951: 7–8), and families were given the opportunity toself-describe; they did so by emphasizing the principal breadwinner andunderlining her or his occupation. The question arises whether these

Table 3 Daughters and sons of the head of the household whodeclared a job in the Napoleonic census (1802)

Daughters N %

Ages 0–6 years (100 = 2,647 individuals) 20 0.8Ages 7–14 years (100 = 2,840) 144 5.1Ages 15–25 years (100 = 2,087) 313 15Ages 26–35 years (100 = 441) 108 24.5

Sons N %Ages 0–6 years (100 = 2,665) 23 0.9Ages 7–14 years (100 = 2,735) 220 8Ages 15–25 years (100 = 2,088) 859 41.1Ages 26–35 years (100 = 618) 402 65

Notes: The sample excluded housewives, students, clergy, beggars, and rentiers.Percentage is calculated for each cohort age.Source : 1802 population census.

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findings are particular to a specific historical context – namely, Turin atthe end of the eighteenth century – or if they are structural and persistentand remain pertinent for other population censuses of Turin.

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE ACROSS OTHER POPULATIONCENSUSES OF TURIN

Between the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of theeighteenth century, the politics of alliances of Vittorio Amedeo II involvedthe Dukedom in a long military mobilization. From 1690 to 1696 and from1703 to 1713, the French army invaded Piedmont and, in 1706, the cityof Turin itself came under siege. The long period of war and the dangersto which the city was exposed encouraged the ministers of the Duke toconduct several population surveys in order to establish the number andavailability of men for possible conscription. A population census – certainlyone of the most important, and almost completely preserved to date – wascarried out in August 1705 on the eve of the siege. It had four aims: (1)to inform the military authorities about the number of men potentiallyavailable to the army; (2) to provide a preliminary estimate of the numberswho might need relief and provision during the siege; (3) to presentspecific information about the number of healthy men and boys who couldcontribute to the protection of the city during the siege (for example incase of fire or bombing); and (4) to ensure the distribution of foodstuffs, aswell as the construction or repair of military installations and equipment. Iwill base my conclusions on a sizeable sample of this census, accounting for17,435 individuals and representing more than half of the population.11 Thecensus provides the names of all family members, their age, place of birth,sometimes their occupation or job, and their position in relation to the headof the household (wife, daughter, etc.; see Eugenio Casanova 1909; BeatriceZucca Micheletto 2006).

The second census in this comparison was carried out in Turin in 1857,on the eve of Italian unification, in a very different social, economic, andpolitical context. At that time, Turin and its surrounding suburbs weregrowing quickly, manufacturing was developing, and the city accounted formore than 100,000 inhabitants. I will use here a sample of 32,466 individuals,equal to about one-third of the total census.12

The two samples show that gender and marital status remained crucialfactors for the apparent determination of women’s LFP rate, but withimportant differences among the censuses. According to the 1705 census,only one-fifth of the female population ages 15 and over listed an occupation(22.5 percent), while far more men stated a job, (77.3 percent). In addition,once again, women at the head of a family (capifamiglia) had a job morefrequently than married women (44.9 percent of the former against 3percent of the latter). On the contrary, in the 1857 census, women’s wage

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work is more visible, since 61.6 percent of them (ages 15 and over) declaredan occupation compared to 89 percent of men. Marital status also hadless effect on the declaration of a job: 52.1 percent of wives stated a jobagainst 66.4 percent of women who declared themselves to be heads of thehousehold.

The meaning and the reasons for the variation of women’s LFP rates overtime raise important historiographical questions. These rates are likely theresult of a mix of variables that merit investigation (such as the politicaland military motivations to carry out the censuses, changes in economic orcultural environment, or in the juridical condition of women). Nevertheless,it remains probable that women were encouraged (or not encouraged) tostate their occupation according to their marital status or their positionas head of the household from the beginning of the eighteenth centuryto the middle of nineteenth century and that, therefore, their economiccontribution is strongly underrepresented. With this in mind, I turn toexploring other, nonprincipal breadwinner-oriented, sources in order tocontextualize women’s work and achieve a better evaluation of this hiddenlabor force.

THE OSPEDALE DI CARITÀ: A NONPRINCIPAL BREADWINNERSOURCE

As shown, the Napoleonic census presents suspicious underrecording ofmarried women’s activity in the Turin labor market, and it is probablyinadequate for establishing a realistic portrait of married women’s LFPrate. To prove this, I mobilized additional sources such as the registersof applicants to the Ospedale di Carità, which was the most importantcharitable institution of Turin during the eighteenth century (SandraCavallo 1990, 1995). The Ospedale gave relief to a range of peoplein economic difficulty: paupers, orphans, abandoned children, lonelyand isolated people, couples and families with numerous small children,widows, and widowers. Poor or elderly people who could not work, illand isolated people, and orphans were housed in the institution itself,while families received external relief, including rations of bread and wetnurses who were paid for by the hospital for infant children. Individualsand families asking for relief registered their age, profession, place ofbirth, and domicile in the city in the Libri delle Informazioni (InformationRegisters), along with an explanation of their difficulties. Table 4 shows thatbetween January 1762 and December 1792, 38 percent of applicants werecouples (5,690 individuals); 20 percent were widows (2,979); 7 percentwere married women “without husband/abandoned” (1,030); and 7 percentwere unmarried women (1,031).

Most of the families that applied for assistance were not beggars orvagrants; they were experiencing a temporary imbalance between resources

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Table 4 People asking for relief at the Ospedale di Carità (1762–92)

N %

Couples 5,690 38.1Widows 2,979 20Widowers 1,179 7.9Married women without husband 1,030 6.9Married men without wife 89 0.6Unmarried women 1,031 6.9Unmarried men 890 6Abandoned children, foundlings and orphans 1,185 7.9Without indication 858 5.7Total 14,931 100

Source : Ospedale di Carità, Libri delle Informazioni per i ricoveri, 1762–92.

and consumption as a result of having many small children who were notyet able to participate in the household economy, because of a long-termillness, or because of the unemployment of the adult partners. The goal wasto help families overcome these crises; aid was temporary, and intended toencourage individuals to get back to work or to find another job. In surveyingthe condition of families, the Ospedale di Carità had very different ideas,aims, and objectives from those that guided the enumerators of populationcensus. Here, individuals and families were encouraged to declare exactlytheir job or activity in order to demonstrate their palpable contributionto the survival of the family, their unsuccessful efforts in face of the crisis,and finally the fact that they were worthy of receiving the charity relief.13

Worthiness hinged on all family members doing their utmost to contributeto family survival, providing some clear incentive to report all efforts madeby all family members, including those deemed peripheral or unimportantby enumerations that assessed working families through the fog of malebreadwinner ideology. Even more importantly, relief was conditioned ontotal family income giving the authorities an even stronger incentive to bevigilant about the contributions of wives and children.

Thus, if a wife performed a job that paid well enough to ensure the survivalof the couple, this was often a reason for refusing or suspending aid. A fewexamples will illustrate the extent to which the Ospedale valued marriedwomen’s work. In 1770, Giacoletto Costanzo, a 43-year-old man, reported a“strain of the femur” that did not allow to him to work. His wife worked asa seamstress of military uniforms. Since the couple did not have childrenand Costanzo’s wife had a job, the Ospedale’s administration board didnot approve his application for hospitalization and instead opted for thedistribution of some rations of bread. These rations remained the couple’sonly relief for three years, until 1773, when Costanzo was finally admitted

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after the administration board officially recognized him as a permanentinvalid.14 Similarly, in May 1793, the administration board refused reliefto the family of Nicola and Angela Isidora and their three children, since,as the board explained, “the parents are sufficiently able-bodied to work,and the husband earns 22 livres per month, while his wife earns 7 sous perday in the royal tobacco manufacture.”15

Therefore, from a methodological point of view, the registers of theOspedale di Carità constitute a genuine nonprincipal breadwinner-orientedsource, capable of correcting and improving the measurement of women’slabor force rates in comparison with the data available from the populationcensus. For example, when we cross-reference the names of 510 coupleswho were applicants to the Ospedale with the Napoleonic census, eighteencouples emerge as listed in both. Even in this restricted sample, the resultsdemonstrate the corrective power of the Ospedale source: Sixteen of theeighteen wives did not state any job or activity in the census. However, theregisters of the Ospedale for the same years reveal that these women declaredoccupations. One woman, Rosa Balbo, for example, was registered in thecensus as the wife of Gio. Domenico Balbo, carpenter, and as the motherof three children. But in the register of the Ospedale di Carità, we discoverthat she worked as a spinner. Similarly, another woman, Orsola Bertoldo, wasonly included as the wife of the porter Giuseppe in the Napoleonic census;but in her application to the Ospedale for poor relief, she presented herselfas a retailer.

The results of this relief policy are evident. Tables 5a and 5b compareparticipation rates of women from the registers of the Ospedale di Caritàwith those of the Napoleonic census. The differences are meaningful:According to the Ospedale records between 1785 and 1799, 63.2 percent of

Table 5a Women’s labor force participation rates according to the registersof the Ospedale di Carità compared with those of the Napoleonic census

Ospedale di Carità Napoleoniccensus

N % %

Women declaring a job 1,261 63.2 33.3Women declaring other activities (housewives,

students)170 8.5 3.1

Women declaring a status 17 0.9 5.6Occupation or condition unknown 548 27.5 58Total 1,996 100 100

Note : The sample includes only women ages 15 and over. Percentages are calculated for eachgroup.Sources: Ospedale di Carità, Libri delle Informazioni per i ricoveri, 1762–99; 1802 populationcensus.

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Table 5b Women declaring a job in the registers of the Ospedalecompared with the Napoleonic census according to their marital status

Ospedale di Carità Napoleoniccensus

N % %

Unmarried women ages 25 and over 38 64.4 55.7Married women 905 73.3 21.7Widows 252 59.2 48.6

Note : Percentages are calculated for each group.Sources: Ospedale di Carità, Libri delle Informazioni per i ricoveri, 1762–99; 1802 populationcensus.

women ages 15 and over had a paid job, compared to 33.3 percent in thecensus.16 Also, only 27.5 percent of women in the Ospedale records did notstate any activity, versus 58 percent in the census. Moreover, the data confirmsuspicion about the underrepresentation of married women’s labor forcerates in the census. Out of a total of 1,235 couples applying at the Ospedalebetween 1785 and 1799, 73.3 percent of wives declared having employment –exactly the opposite of what emerges from the census of 1802 (21.7 percent);thus, married women appear to be a hidden labor force, rather than beingabsent from the labor market.

This rate of women’s participation – specifically of married women – alsooccurs in other Italian cities; for example, in four parishes of eighteenth-century Bologna, where, according to research by Palazzi (1990), 63 percentof wives declared a job. Notably, Palazzi’s source is a partial census ofBologna inhabitants in 1796 – which, like Turin’s Ospedale di Carità, wascarried out with the aim of organizing charity relief. As a consequence,men and women’s work were carefully registered in order to evaluate theircontributions to the domestic economy.

While research has correctly shown that the notion of the malebreadwinner was formally elaborated during the nineteenth century(Jane Humphries 1977; Lydia Morris 1990; Angélique Janssens 1997), acomparison between a conventional source (the Napoleonic census) andan alternative source (the registers of the Ospedale di Carità) reveals thatthe idea of a household economy based on the sole or main breadwinner– male or female – was already well established in the eighteenth century.Moreover, this idea was entrenched not only among town officials, but alsoamong the common people when describing themselves, as was the casewith the Napoleonic census.17 This self-description, in particular, providesconvincing evidence that the Napoleonic census seriously undercountedmarried women LFP rates. Cultural and ideological preconceptions thatundervalued the work or contribution of married women to the household

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economy meant that the male head of the household or the owner of thehouse who was charged to fill out the census form was not inclined to declarewomen’s work. Such ideas were endemic in early modern Europe, where itwas taken for granted that paid work was not central in a woman’s life andthat it should be limited to specific life phases, particularly before marriageand during widowhood. Paid work was regarded as less important thanunpaid domestic activities and housekeeping; taking care of the childrenand of the house were considered the “natural” duties of a married womanwho, in theory, was placed under the protection and care of her husband,who was the main breadwinner. The persistence of this cultural element inconventional sources caused researchers, too, to seriously devalue the laborcontribution of the family members who did not hold the role of “head ofhousehold” – or at least the role of “principal breadwinner,” as was the casewith work performed by married women, by young girls, and also by childrenof both sexes. In other words, their invisibility in the population census hasencouraged researchers to deem their underpaid and paid activities residualand marginal in the family economy. For this reason, the use of alternativesources such as the registers for poor relief is a useful methodological toolfor achieving a more balanced picture of historical LFP rates.

THE IMPACT OF THE COURT SYSTEM AND MIGRATION FLOWS ONTHE TURIN LABOR MARKET

Let us now turn our attention to the second purpose of this study: tohighlight the role of certain economic and cultural factors in determiningthe presence of women in the labor market. Here, I show that thesocioeconomic composition of the city and migration are crucial variablesin shaping women’s occupational patterns. The case studies that followprovide evidence that women’s LFP rate was (also) strictly connected to thelocal demand for labor; that is, the “women responded to opportunities”(Humphries and Sarasúa 2012: 44).

Since the end of the sixteenth century, Turin had been the capital of theDukedom of Savoy, later part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. It housed theroyal court, the officers of the state, as well as the religious hierarchies. Ina city of court and aristocracy, service activities of various prestige and ranknaturally played an important role in the local labor market. According tothe Napoleonic census, 42 percent of the working female population (ages15 and over) and more than 38 percent of the working male population wereemployed in occupations such as domestic workers, waiters and waitresses,cooks, coachmen, grooms, porters, laundresses, and ironers. At the sametime, Turin had a strong artisanal and manufacturing sector: About 33percent of employed women and 38 percent of employed men (ages 15and over) worked in craft workshops or in fabric manufacture. They mostlyproduced and sold luxury goods to the upper classes, from the aristocracy

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at the royal court to the wealthy merchants and bankers, from the religioushierarchies to the royal army. In addition, like other Italian and Europeanregions, Turin and Piedmont were centers of the silk industry. Takinginspiration from the principles of mercantilism developed by Colbert inFrance, the King of Sardinia and his ministers pursued a policy that aimedto support the production and manufacturing of silk. During the eighteenthcentury, Piedmont was one of the most important producers and exportersof raw silk (known as organzino), while the Turin economy was mostlybased on the production of silk goods, precious fabrics decorated withgold or silver yarns, trimmings, clothing, and lingerie (Giuseppe Chicco2002).

Migration was another important feature of the city. People were attractedto Turin because of the numerous labor opportunities it offered. Migrantsarrived from the mountain areas, from around the countryside, as wellas from small cities in Piedmont. Migration flows remained consistentthrough the century, and migrants constituted a reservoir of labor crucialfor economic development. According to the marriage registers of themost populous Turin parishes, in the first half of the eighteenth century,nonnative men comprised about 60 percent of all grooms, and sometimesthis rose to 70 percent (Giovanni Levi 1985). More than fifty years later, in1802, after a period of war and the French annexation, about 60 percentof male inhabitants between 26 and 60 years old were not born in Turin;similarly, more than 40 percent of Turin’s female population between 15 and40 years old was nonnative. Similar migration rates are also seen in otherItalian and European cities, such as Rome, Lyon, or Amsterdam (MauriceGarden 1970; Jan de Vries 1984; Fiorenza Gemini 1998).

How did geographical mobility, which was a long lasting feature of theTurin population, affect women’s occupational opportunities? In recentyears, numerous studies on preindustrial European societies have arguedthat, depending on local demand, migrants occupied specific niches ofthe labor market, were in turn excluded from some others, and sharedothers with people native to the city (Steven L. Kaplan and Cynthia J.Koepp 1986; Jan Lucassen 1987; Carlo Marco Belfanti 1994). Migrantswere also able to take advantage of their position as “strangers” to getaround the restrictions and limitations imposed by guilds or other urbanregulations. But what about Turin? Table 6 shows the most importantoccupations for women inhabitants according to their birthplace. Migrantswere concentrated in manual services, such as domestic servants and cooks(more than 46 percent), or in silk manufacturing such as raw silk spinning(filatoiere). On the other hand, native women were mostly in high-skill textilecrafts – such as bonnet makers (cuffiaie), silk weavers (vellutiere), trimmingmakers, and seamstresses. Native women also shared a few activities withnonnatives – such as food retail – but in contrast, their presence in manualservices was more limited. They were less frequently servants and cooks,

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Table 6 Women’s jobs in 1802 in Turin, according to their birthplace

Nonnative % Nonnative Native % Native

Servants 1,863 46.4 641 19.1Seamstresses 203 5.1 494 14.7Cooks 153 3.8 23 0.7Laundresses, ironers 123 3.1 202 6Foodstuff retailers 114 2.8 90 2.7Silk weavers (vellutiere) 101 2.5 188 5.6Raw silk spinners (filatoiere) 97 2.4 15 0.4Other silk workers 100 2.5 56 1.7Bonnet makers 67 1.7 179 5.3Trimming makers 18 0.4 52 1.5

Others jobs and activities 1,180 29.3 1,478 42.3Total 4,019 100 3,362 100

Note : The sample includes only individuals ages 15 and over with a job. Percentages arecalculated respectively for nonnative and native groups.Source : 1802 population census.

but they were predominant in occupations such as laundresses and ironers(which meant that they controlled some strategic natural resources in thecity, such as pits and fountains).

SKILLED AND UNSKILLED JOBS: OCCUPATIONAL PATTERNS INDOMESTIC SERVICE AND SILK MANUFACTURING ACTIVITIES

Let us turn now to the analysis of two specific case studies: domesticservice and silk manufacturing activities. There the long and fruitful debateabout life-cycle servanthood is relevant. John Hajnal (1983) and PeterLaslett (1965) showed that the life-cycle service was a crucial feature ofthe European marriage pattern. In preindustrial northwestern Europe,boys and girls left their families at a young age and went to spendseveral years in servanthood, until marriage. Research findings about Italianservanthood are much debated because of the complexity and variabilityof local situations from north to south of the peninsula and also fromcity to countryside (Pier Paolo Viazzo 2003; Beatrice Zucca Micheletto2011). Moreover, research reveals a specific Italian urban pattern: sincethe sixteenth century, servants and domestics were concentrated in citieswhere they worked for noble families and for socioeconomic elites. Theywere mainly unmarried women and men over 30 years old with a longexperience of loyal service and long co-residence with the master, a situationthat discouraged marriage (or compelled its postponement; AngiolinaArru 1990, 1992). In northwestern Europe, life-cycle servanthood was an

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important source of women’s wage labor: During this specific period of life,girls amassed money and goods with a view to future marriage (Tine De Moorand Jan Luiten Van Zanden 2010). In contrast, other research shows that inmany Italian contexts – such as in Renaissance Tuscany or in seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Italy – female servanthood was the object of socialcondemnation, since it endangered the girl’s honor (Judith C. Brown 1986;Christiane Klapisch-Zuber 1986; Daniela Lombardi and Francesca Reggiani1990; Giovanna Da Molin 1990). For these reasons, domestic service in Italywas usually a lifelong situation for both men and women and not a transitoryone destined to be abandoned at marriage.

Data for eighteenth-century Turin also reflect this specific pattern ofservanthood. Women servants were more numerous than men: of the 5,154servants registered in the census, about 60 percent (3,081 individuals) werewomen. These covered a wide range of age groups: those between 15 and 30accounted for 35 percent, while more than 54 percent was concentrated inthe 31 to 60 age cohort;18 in addition, 63.7 percent were unmarried19 andmore than 80 percent were co-resident servants, living in the same house asthe master (equal to 2,490 women servants). The remarkable presence ofunmarried women over 30 years old (about 38 percent of unmarried servantswere between 31 and 50 years old) means that, as in other Italian cities,female service was a life-long condition. Since the average age of womenat marriage at the beginning of the nineteenth century was 28.7,20 olderservants were probably on their way to permanent celibacy and a lifetime ofservice. In addition, as explained in the previous chapter, immigrant womenservants were far more numerous than their Turinese counterparts: morethan 75 percent, as against about 24 percent. At the same time, since servicewas an important way of raising money for a dowry, which was indispensablefor getting into the marriage market, it is possible that, for many girls, theirarrival in Turin coincided with the beginning of life-cycle servanthood. Aftera certain period, many of them returned to their communities and gotmarried there. For those who settled in Turin, on the other hand, the goalof getting married was not always attained. They were often considered tooold to easily find a husband and too unskilled to find another job, and weretherefore obliged to stay in servanthood for the rest of their lives. Thesedynamics were strongly reinforced in the nineteenth century, when in manyItalian cities the presence of women in domestic service increased and theimage of the young girl arriving in the city to save for a dowry and to find ahusband became commonplace (Margherita Pelaja 1988).

The factors analyzed thus far – marital status and migration experience– combined in different configurations in two important sectors of thesilk industry: spinning and weaving, in which women were particularlynumerous. Silk spinning was a low-skilled job, very common amongnonnative girls (Giuseppe Chicco 1995). On the other hand, silk weavingwas a high-skilled craft that usually drew native women. But, in both cases,

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Table 7 Nonnative silk spinners, native silk weavers andmarital status according to the Napoleonic census (1802)

N %

Nonnative silk spinners and marital statusUnmarried women 32 28.8Married women 37 33.3Widows 31 27.9Unknown marital status 11 9.9Total 111 100

Native silk weavers and marital statusUnmarried women 63 29.2Married women 102 47.2Widows 47 21.8Unknown marital status 4 1.9Total 216 100

Source : 1802 population census.

as Table 7 shows, these activities did not change along with marital status;and, since they were not affected by the female life-cycle phases, they werelife-long activities.

Silk weaving also required the development of a certain degree of skill,technical ability, and training experience, though we cannot establish aspecific comparison with the level of male skills required for the samejob, as assessed for Renaissance Florence (Brown 1986). However, skill wasa crucial factor for women’s occupational opportunities. In eighteenth-century Turin, women were excluded from urban guilds; but they acquiredinformal training by learning in the family workshop, from the mother orthe father, or from a member of the kinship network.21 These informaleducational paths mostly started when the girl was young. Thus, native girlshad more opportunities to enter a skilled artisanal occupation than migrantgirls, as testified by the high percentage of natives among silk weavers. On thecontrary, nonnative girls more frequently entered low-skilled or unskilledactivities, such as silk spinning and domestic service. But this was not alwaysthe destiny of migrant women; their opportunities were improved if theyarrived in the city at a very young age. According to the census of 1802,nonnative girls who settled in Turin before the age of 15 became silk weavers(but also seamstresses or bonnet makers) as frequently as their native peers.However, these career possibilities decreased quickly if they arrived at anolder age; in this case, they more frequently became servants (Lamberti2003). In addition, since while acquiring training young women remainedin an artisanal environment and socialized with other silk workers, theyoften married into the occupation. In the civil marriages registered in Turin

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from 1803 to 1814, about 33 percent of silk weavers married a silk weaverand about 70 percent of women working in craft married an artisan. Thus,in practice, female artisans did not change their job with their maritalstatus. Furthermore, although married women were likely compelled toaccommodate their working rhythms and the nature of their paid work totheir duties in housekeeping and in taking care of children, in the long runthis did not require women to stop or leave wage work.

Access to skills also affected the occupational patterns of widows. Skilledwork learned in youth and continued during married life allowed womento earn their own living during widowhood. By contrast, women who wereunable to learn a skill during their youth or after marriage had restrictedopportunities to improve their occupational position. Therefore unskilledwomen were also the most disadvantaged in widowhood: Lack of resourcesto support an independent occupation, together with social isolation, oftenled them toward service or retail.

CONCLUSION

Despite the growing literature on women’s wage work in recent years,historical research investigating the presence of women in the labor marketstill remains rare and must inevitably tackle methodological difficultiesimposed by the partiality and incompleteness of preindustrial sources. Thepresent study is a first effort to evaluate women’s LFP rates in preindustrialTurin by discussing two complementary approaches. The use of sourcesthat were intended to capture the economic contributions of all familymembers, together with an analysis of the local context in which womenperformed their jobs and the factors related to the local demand for labor,are the most useful methodological tools for improving the quality of theresearch by identifying women workers missing from analyses based on moreconventional sources that were politically, ideologically, and sociologicallyinclined to overlook the economic contributions of women and children.The analysis of the Napoleonic census of Turin exposes which categories ofwomen workers are better represented or underrepresented in conventionalsources. Women’s marital status and their position as head of the householdstrongly influenced whether they reported their occupation in the census.If we consider the first variable, data show that only 21.7 percent of marriedwomen declared their job – less than widowers (48.6 percent) or unmarriedwomen over age 25 (55.7 percent). Yet the data show that women whoidentified themselves as the head of the family specified their occupationalposition more frequently than other members (53.5 percent of all femaleheads of household). These women’s participation rates are suspiciouslylow, and might be conditioned by the ideology of the main breadwinner.Family members who did not hold the role of principal breadwinner werenot encouraged to declare their occupation, or the heads of the household

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charged with filling out census forms were not inclined to declare their paidwork; consequently, their work efforts were the most underrepresented. Thispoint is proven through the use of nonconventional sources, such as registersof applicants for charity relief. In this study, evidence from the Ospedale diCarità reveals that 63.2 percent of all applicant women ages 15 and overstated a job – as well as over 73 percent of married women, data that clashwith the findings of the Napoleonic census. For these reasons, therefore,the exploitation of nonprincipal breadwinner-oriented sources, particularlythose that had the explicit goal of incentivizing all family members to declarean occupation, is a crucial methodological choice.

Finally, to better evaluate women’s LFP rates, it is also necessary to take intoaccount the socioeconomic and cultural variables operating in the local andhistorical context of the society under analysis, which were able to influencethe employment possibilities for women. In the case of eighteenth-centuryTurin, for example, the range of women’s occupational opportunities seemsto be strongly affected not only by labor supply factors (marital status andage, already well known to researchers), but also by three contextual factorsconnected to the local demand for labor: the dual role of the city as a politicaland silk manufacturing center; the important migration flows that reachedTurin all through the century; and the possibility of obtaining training,rather than working as part of an unskilled or low-skilled labor force.

Beatrice Zucca MichelettoGroupe de Recherche d’Histoire (GRHIS), Université de Rouen

Rue Lavoisier, Mont Saint Aignan, 76821, Francee-mail: beatrice.zucca@gmail.com

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTOR

Beatrice Zucca Micheletto is a researcher at GRHIS at the University ofRouen (France). Her research focuses on preindustrial European societies,especially on women, history of work, history of the family, and migrationsin Italy and France. She has authored several articles in French, Italian,and English (Annals de Démographie Historique, History of the Family), and isauthor of the forthcoming book from PURH Travail et propriété des femmesen temps de crise (Turin XVIIIe siècle) [Women, work, and property in hardtimes (Turin, 18th century)]. In 2010, she co-organized the internationalworkshop “Labor as Resource” and edited the proceedings in Mélanges del’École Française de Rome, (2011–123/1).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author thanks Professor Luciano Allegra, Professor Donatella Balani,and Professor Maria Carla Lamberti for letting her use the databases.

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NOTES1 The “tithe” – originally equivalent to one-tenth of the harvest – was a contribution asked

from the parishioners in order to support the church and the priests.2 From the sixteenth century on, Turin and the Piedmont were part of the Dukedom of

Savoy. After the conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession, and as a consequenceof the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), the Dukedom of Savoy first became the Kingdom ofSicily and then, in 1720, the Kingdom of Sardinia.

3 The original collection is Municipal Archives of Turin (ASCT), coll. XII, Statistica dellapopolazione 1714–93, vol. 57–158.

4 Between 1799 and 1815, Napoleon carried out a major reform of the French publicadministration with the aim of creating a pyramidal and centralized nation. Hiscollaborators enacted the Civil Code, which reformed family law and organized Franceinto departments, many of which carried out economic and demographic surveys.During his rule, Napoleonic armies conquered the Italian and the Iberian peninsulasand extended the reforms to these territories.

5 During the eighteenth century, in Turin, only wealthy families, aristocracy, andinstitutions owned palaces and houses. In contrast, most families rented a room orsome rooms in these houses.

6 ASCT, coll. XII, Censimento del 1802, vol. 173–8.7 For a discussion about methodology see Maria Carla Lamberti (2002b).8 According to the registers of the Ospedale di Carità, children over 14 years of age were

considered capable of earning their living.9 We classified as “housewives” women who declared, “I take care of my family/of my

house.”10 Indeed, as previously explained, the census forms were filled out by the families

themselves or by the owner of the house in which the family lived.11 The sample is based on the records of the central quarters of the city.12 The sample is based on the records of the central quarters of the city (ASCT, Censimento

del 1857 ).13 This was in accordance with the image of “the deserving poor,” which was very common

in Old Regime societies (Jean-Pierre Gutton 1971; Olwen H. Hufton 1974).14 ASCT, Ospedale di Carità, cat. VI, Libri delle Informazioni per i ricoveri, vol. 40, f. 470.15 ASCT, Ospedale di Carità, cat. VI, Libri delle Informazioni per i ricoveri, vol. 49, f. 340.16 I refer here to two samples collected by students for their graduation thesis at

the Department of Economic History at the University of Turin. I organized andstandardized the samples in a unique database.

17 For a discussion of the importance of ideological and institutional factors in restrictingwomen’s work in nineteenth-century England, see Sarah Horrell and Jane Humphries(1995) and Jane Humphries (2010).

18 This is a feature of the urban Italian model, as also observed in other research. In ReggioEmilia in 1708, for example, women servants over age 30 accounted for 56 percent ofall servants; in Rome in 1765, in the parish of San Damaso, they made up 48 percent(Arru 1992).

19 Percentages are calculated based on the total population of women servants registeredin the 1802 census – excluding those of unknown age and unknown marital status.

20 According to the marriage acts of the Napoleonic age (1802–13; ASCT, Atti di matrimonio1802–13, vol. 1–16).

21 Women in Turin were officially excluded from guilds, with the exception of the taffetaweavers and button-makers and generally with the exception of daughters and widowsof masters. This meant that although they were skilled, women artisans – and especiallywives – were never seen as real workers; as a consequence, the probability of their worknot being recorded in official records was high.

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REFERENCES

Primary sourcesMunicipal Archives of Turin (ASCT). Coll. XII, Censimento del 1802 [Census of 1802],

vol. 173–8. Integrally transcribed on a database by a team of students coordinatedby Prof. M.C. Lamberti; stored at the Department of Economic History, University ofTurin.

———. Coll. XII, Statistica della popolazione 1714–93 [Population surveys 1714–93], vol. 57–158.

———. Atti di matrimonio 1802–13 [Civil marriage acts 1802–13], vol. 1–16. Transcribedby Prof. M.C. Lamberti and her team and by Prof. L. Allegra.

———. Censimento del 1857 [Census of 1857]. Partially transcribed on a database by ateam of students coordinated by Prof. M.C. Lamberti; stored at the Department ofEconomic History, University of Turin.

———. Ospedale di Carità, cat. VI, Libri delle Informazioni per i ricoveri, vol. 38–49 (1762–99).National Archives of Turin (AST, sez. riun.). Consegna bocche 1705 [Census of 1705].

Transcribed by a team of researchers and students at the Universities of California andof Turin (coord. by Prof. G. Symcox and Prof. D. Balani); stored at the Department ofHistory, University of Turin.

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domestic service: Specificities of the Italian case]. In Storia della famiglia italiana 1750–1950 [A history of the Italian family 1750–1950], edited by Marzio Barbagli and DavidKertzer, 273–306. Bologna: Il Mulino.

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Cavallo, Sandra. 1990. “Patterns of Poor-Relief and Patterns of Poverty in Eighteenth-Century Italy: The Evidence of the Turin Ospedale di Carità.” Continuity and Change5(1): 65–98.

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Chicco, Giuseppe. 1995. La seta in Piemonte, 1650–1800: Un sistema industriale d’ancienrégime [Silk in Piedmont, 1650–1800: An Old Regime manufacturing system]. Milan:F. Angeli.

———. 2002. “Alla periferia della moda: Mercanti e tessitori nel Settecento” [At theperiphery of the fashion system: Merchants and weavers in the eighteenth century].In Storia di Torino: La città fra crisi e ripresa (1630–1730) [A history of Turin: The citybetween crisis and recovery (1630–1730)], edited by Giuseppe Ricuperati, 911–38.Turin: Einaudi.

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