Research project Challenging the domestic

This project aims to a deepened understanding of how gender have structured economic development. This will be done through studying rural households’ labour organization during the 19th century by using contracts, lists of work, and printed handbooks.

Gender division of labour is important in three ways that will be investigated in this project: the knowledge of what kind of work men and women did historically need to be enhanced; gender division of labour in households is part of power relations with far-reaching consequences for gender equality in society at large; and gender division of labour is part of the macro-level economic change of industrialization.
Crofters were a rural group that had access to land, but paid rent through obligatory day labouring for the landowner. Crofters’ households were also part of other gendered labour relations: extra day labouring, production for the market, and through the employment of servants. As such, crofters’ households make an ideal study object to understand how the economic structure and gender division of labour affected each other.

Through a comparison of the gender division and organization of labour in crofters’ households between the manorial economy of southern Sweden (Skåne) and the proto-industrial economy of western Sweden (Sjuhärad area), this study will contribute to the question of how gender division of labour and structure of the economy were connected during the thorough transformation towards industrialization.