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The persistent workforce: female day labour on capitalist farms in eighteenth-century Flanders
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2022
Abstract
Female day labourers regularly appear in the accounts of capitalist Flemish farmers throughout the eighteenth century. Their persistent employment challenges the dominant view that female day labour was marginalised in areas of agrarian capitalism across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The hitherto unexplored accounts of nine capitalist farms reveal the seasonal employment patterns, sexual division of labour and wages of those female day labourers in Flanders. While spring weeding was an important source of employment, women also continued to be hired during the harvest and for the cultivation of labour-intensive crops. Throughout the century, female day wages amounted to 0.4–0.73 of male wages. Women were excluded from well-paid tasks, but equal rates for equal work do not suggest wage discrimination in the strictest sense. The Flemish accounts thus reinforce the idea that female day labour persisted in areas with labour-intensive agriculture and alternative employment opportunities.
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1 State Archives Bruges (hereafter SAB), Family Archive Lippens, p. 20.
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14 Snell, ‘Agricultural seasonal unemployment’.
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16 For a comphrehensive description of these two agrosystems, see E. Thoen, ‘Social Agrosystems as an Economic Concept to Explain Regional Differences: An Essay taking the Former County of Flanders as an Example (Middle Ages–19th Century)’, in Landholding and Land Transfer in the North Sea Area (Late Middle Ages–19th Century) (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 47–66.
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18 B. Blondé, T. Lambrecht, W. Ryckbosch and R. Vermoesen, ‘Consumérisme, révolution agricole et proto-industrialisation dans la Flandre et le Brabant du XVIIIe siècle: malédiction ou bénédiction? Une synthèse préliminaire’, in G. Ferrand and J. Petrowiste, eds, Le Nécessaire et le Superflu: Le Paysan Consommateur (Toulouse, 2019), pp. 195–200; E. Vanhaute, ‘Rich agriculture and poor farmers: land, landlords and farmers in Flanders in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, Rural History, 12 (2001), 19–40.
19 Lambrecht, ‘Agrarian Change, Labour Organization and Welfare Entitlement in the North-Sea Area, 1650–1800’, pp. 205–15.
20 See, for example, M. Goossens, The Economic Development of Belgian Agriculture: A Regional Perspective, 1812–1846 (Brussels, 1992), pp. 265–310; Vanhaute, ‘Rich Agriculture and Poor Farmers’; E. Thoen, ‘A “Commercial Survival Economy” in Evolution: The Flemish Countryside and the Transition to Capitalism (Middle Ages–19th Century)’, in P. Hoppenbrouwers and J. Luiten van Zanden, eds, Peasants into Farmers? The Transformation of Rural Economy and Society in the Low Countries (Middle Ages–19th Century) in Light of the Brenner Debate (Turnhout, 2001), pp. 102–57; E. Thoen, ‘Rural economy and landscape organization in pre-industrial Flanders’, Sartoniana, 32 (2019), 247–76.
21 See, for example, Pinchbeck, Women, Workers and the Industrial Revolution; Speechley, ‘Female and Child Agricultural Day Labourers’, p. 64; Gielgud, ‘Nineteenth-Century Farm Women’, pp. 155–77.
22 T. Lambrecht, Een Grote Hoeve in een Klein Dorp: Relaties van Arbeid en Pacht op het Vlaamse Platteland tijdens de 18de Eeuw (Gent, 2002), pp. 1–3.
23 State Archives Ghent (hereafter SAG), Karmelietenklooster Bottelare, p. 2.
24 SAG, Kerk Denderleeuw, pp. 78–108.
25 SAG, Abdij van Drongen, p. 125.
26 Rekeningen van Uitgaven van het Klooster Elsegem bij Oudenaarde, 1749–71.
27 SAB, Family Archive Lippens, p. 20.
28 Grootseminarie Bruges (hereafter GB), Archives Abbey of Dunes, Accounts, 170–170bis; SAB, Oud Kerkarchief, 374/A/4.
29 GB, Archives Abbey of the Dunes, Accounts, pp. 88, 95–8.
30 GB, Archives Abbey of the Dunes, Accounts, pp. 88–90.
31 State Archives Courtrai, Family Archive Descantons de Montblanc (de Plotho), p. 9612.
32 J. Dijkman and H. Greefs, ‘Inleiding “Het androcentrisme voorbij?”: 25 jaar gender en sociale geschiedenis’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 17 (2020), 5–14.
33 See, for example, the special issues of Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 2:3 (2005) and 17:1 (2020) and the following articles: Schmidt, ‘Vrouwenarbeid in de vroegmoderne tijd in Nederland’; E. Van Nederveen Meerkerk, ‘Gender and economic history: the story of a complicated marriage’, Tijdschrijft voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 11 (2014), 175–97; Boter and Woltjer, ‘The impact of sectorial shifts’; Elise Van Nederveen Meerkerk, ‘Van regionaal naar globaal: Wat kunnen we leren van internationaal vergelijkend historisch onderzoek naar arbeid en gender?’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 17 (2020), 77–96.
34 A. Cabana, H. French, C. R. Johnson, L. Van Molle, M. Cariño and J. V. Serrão, ‘Gender and rural history: a roundtable’, Historia Agraria, 8 (2021), 18.
35 L. Vervaet, ‘Women and wage labour in rural Flanders in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’, Agricultural History Review, 67 (2019), 203–26; P. van Cruyningen, ‘Vrouwenarbeid in de Zeeuwse landbouw in de achttiende eeuw’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 2 (2005), 43–59. The topic is briefly adressed in Lambrecht’s study of the labour and lease relations of a farm in Markegem in the eighteenth century. Lambrecht, Een Grote Hoeve. On service in Flanders, see T. Lambrecht, ‘The Institution of Service in Rural Flanders in the Sixteenth Century: A Regional Perspective’, in J. Whittle, ed., Servants in Rural Europe: 1400–1900 (Woodbridge, UK, 2017), pp. 37–55.
36 J. Burnette, ‘Seasonal Patterns of Agricultural Day-Labour at Eight English Farms, 1835–1844’, in J. Hatcher and J. Stephenson, eds, Seven Centuries of Unreal Wages (London, 2018), pp. 195–225; van Cruyningen, ‘Vrouwenarbeid’, pp. 49–50; T. Lambrecht, ‘Peasant Labour Strategies and the Logic of Family Labour in the Southern Low Countries during the 18th Century’, in S. Cavaciocchi, ed., The Economic Role of the Family in the European Economy from the 13th to the 18th Centuries (Firenze, 2009), pp. 643–4.
37 Simonton, A History of European Women’s Work; Gielgud, ‘Nineteenth-Century Farm Women’, p. 14; van Cruyningen, ‘Vrouwenarbeid’, pp. 53–5; Joyce Burnette, ‘Married with children: the family status of female day-labourers at two south-western farms’, Agricultural History Review, 55 (2007), 75–94; Vervaet, ‘Women and wage labour’, pp. 212–24.
38 S. De Langhe, ‘Oude vrijsters: Bestaansstrategieën van ongehuwde vrouwen op het Brugse platteland’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Ghent, 2013), pp. 160–7.
39 N. Verdon, ‘“… A much neglected historical source”: the uses and limitations of farm account books to historians of rural women’s work’, Women’s History Notebooks, 8 (2001), 7; B. H. Slicher van Bath, ‘Accounts and diaries of farmers before 1800 as sources for agricultural history’, A.A.G.-Bijdragen, 8 (1962), 5–33; W. Rothenberg, ‘Farm account books: problems and possibilities’, Farm Account Books, 58 (1984), 106–12; Verdon, Rural Women Workers, pp. 31–9; Burnette, ‘The wages and employment’, pp. 664–6; Humphries and Sarasúa, ‘Off the record’.
40 Pinchbeck, Women, Workers and the Industrial Revolution, p. 95; Gielgud, ‘Nineteenth-Century Farm Women’, p. 16; Speechley, ‘Female and Child Agricultural Day Labourers’, p. 26; Verdon, ‘“ … A much neglected historical source”’; Verdon, Rural Women Workers, pp. 36–7.
41 L. Dendooven, Aantekeningen over de Nieuw-Hazegras-Polder te Knokke 1784–1965 (Den Haag, 1968), pp. 51–2.
42 Simonton, A History of European Women’s Work, pp. 27–36; Verdon, Rural Women Workers, p. 27; J. Whittle and M. Hailwood, ‘The gender division of labour in early modern England’, Economic History Review, 73 (2020), pp. 3–32.
43 Vervaet, ‘Women and wage labour’.
44 Roberts, ‘Sickles and scythes’, p. 15; P. Lindemans, Geschiedenis van de landbouw in België (Antwerpen, 1994), vol. 2, pp. 57–65; P. van Cruyningen, Behoudend maar Buigzaam: Boeren in West-Zeeuw-Vlaanderen 1650–1850 (Wageningen, 2000), pp. 167–8; Vervaet, ‘Women and wage labour’, pp. 218–19; T. Lambrecht, ‘Harvest Work and Labor Market Regulation in Old Regime Northern France’, in T. Safley, ed., Labor Before the Industrial Revolution: Work, Technology and their Ecologies in an Age of Early Capitalism (London, 2019), pp. 123–6.
45 Gielgud, ‘Nineteenth-Century Farm Women’, pp. 67–8.
46 Roberts, ‘Sickles and scythes’, p. 15; Vervaet, ‘Women and wage labour’, p. 218.
47 Vervaet, ‘Women and wage labour’, pp. 218–19; Lindemans, Geschiedenis, pp. 57–8.
48 J. Burnette, ‘An investigation of the female-male wage gap during the industrial revolution in Britain’, Economic History Review, 50 (1997), 275–6.
49 van Cruyningen, ‘Vrouwenarbeid’, pp. 48–9, 55; van Cruyningen, Behoudend maar Buigzaam, pp. 167–8.
50 Lambrecht, Een Grote Hoeve, p. 138.
51 van Cruyningen, ‘Vrouwenarbeid’, p. 55.
52 Sharpe, Adapting to Capitalism, pp. 90–1.
53 Gielgud, ‘Nineteenth-Century Farm Women’, pp. 137–77.
54 Speechley, ‘Female and Child Agricultural Day Labourers’, chs 3, 5.
55 Verdon, Rural Women Workers, pp. 102–03.
56 Sharpe, Adapting to Capitalism, pp. 90–5.
57 Lambrecht, Een Grote Hoeve, pp. 137–45.
58 N. Verdon, ‘A Diminishing Force? Reassessing the Employment of Female Day Labourers in English Agriculture, c. 1790–1850’, in Lane, Raven and Snell, eds, Women, Work and Wages in England, 1600–1850, pp. 208–09.
59 Simonton, A History of European Women’s Work, pp. 30–6.
60 J. Burnette, ‘Testing for occupational crowding in eighteenth-century British agriculture’, Explorations in Economic History, 33 (1996), 319–45.
61 Burnette, ‘An investigation’.
62 Sharpe, ‘The female labour market’, pp. 168–70; P. Lane, ‘A Customary or Market Wage? Women and Work in the East Midlands, c. 1700–1840’, in Lane, Raven and Snell, eds, Women, Work and Wages in England, 1600–1850, pp. 107–10, 116–17.
63 Sharpe, ‘The female labour market’, pp. 172–4.
64 Lambrecht, Een Grote Hoeve, p. 138.
65 Ibid., pp. 137–45; T. Lambrecht, ‘Reciprocal exchange, credit and cash: agricultural labour markets and local economies in the southern Low Countries during the eighteenth century’, Continuity and Change, 18 (2003), 237–61; Lambrecht, ‘Peasant Labour Strategies’.
66 Vervaet also noted the impersonal nature of labour relations in coastal Flanders in the late middle ages: Vervaet, ‘Women and wage labour’, p. 211.
67 P. Priester, Geschiedenis van de Zeeuwse landbouw circa 1600–1900 (Wageningen, 1998), pp. 89–110; I. Devos, ‘Malaria in Vlaanderen tijdens de 18de en 19de eeuw’, in J. Parmentier and S. Spanoghe, eds, Orbis in Orbem: Liber Amicorum John Everaert (Ghent, 2001), pp. 213–14; Lambrecht, ‘Agrarian Change, Labour Organization and Welfare Entitlement in the North-Sea Area, 1650–1800’, pp. 212–15; Vervaet, ‘Women and wage labour’, p. 213.
68 Sharpe, Adapting to Capitalism, p. 146; Verdon, Rural Women Workers, p. 126; Lane, ‘A Customary or Market Wage?’; J. Burnette, Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain (Cambridge, UK, 2008), pp. 72–3.
69 Lane, ‘A Customary or Market Wage?’, p. 118.
70 Burnette, ‘An investigation’, pp. 275–7.
71 Lindemans, Geschiedenis, p. 61; Roberts, ‘Sickles and scythes’, p. 5.
72 Lambrecht, Een Grote Hoeve, p. 138.
73 Gilboy, ‘Labour at Thornborough’, p. 396; Gielgud, ‘Nineteenth-Century Farm Women’, pp. 89–90, 102–05, 136–7; Sharpe, ‘The female labour market’, p. 173; Simonton, A History of European Women’s Work, pp. 18–24.
74 Burnette, ‘An investigation’, pp. 268–9.
75 C. Gyssels and L. Van der Straeten, Bevolking: Arbeid en Tewerkstelling in West-Vlaanderen, 1796–1815 (Gent, 1986), pp. 33–6; Vanhaute, ‘Rich Agriculture and Poor Farmers’.
76 J. Humphries, ‘Enclosures, common rights, and women: the proletarianization of families in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries’, Journal of Economic History, 50 (1990), 17–42; Sharpe, Adapting to Capitalism, pp. 175–7; Humphries and Weisdorf, ‘The wages of women’, pp. 429–30.