With a new academic year, a new season of the monthly-organised IISH Seminar Series commences, with a slightly changed format. The presentations will be kept shorter to leave more room for Q&A and discussion, to accommodate a more lively discussion we hope to encourage all attendants to read the papers in advance. Here is the (preliminary) program:
- 4 September – Alexandra De Pleijt (Oxford University) Two Worlds of Female Labour: Gender Wage Inequality in Western Europe, 1300-1800
- 2 October - Maarten Prak (Utrecht University) Citizens Without Nations: Urban Citizenship in Europe and the World, c. 1000-1789
- 6 November - Hamed Khosravi (School of Architecture London) An Unfinished Project for Tehran (1955 - 1977)
- 4 December - Cassandra Mark-Thiessen (University of Basel) Agricultural Contention in Colonial Africa
- 5 February – Hélène Thiollet (Sciences Po Paris) Anatomy of change in an oil-monarchy. Immigration, reforms and social transformation in Saudi Arabia (1991-2018)
- 5 March - Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo (University of Coimbra) The internationalization of colonial labour: From Berlin to Geneva (1880s-1920s)
- 2 April - Maximiliano Menz (Universidade Federal de Sao Paolo) to be announced
- 7 May - Peter Cole (Western Illinois University) to be announced
- 4 June - Görkem Akgöz (Humboldt University) Negotiating Femininity and Productivity: Discourses on Gender and Labor in Post-War Turkey
The first seminar takes place next Tuesday 4 September at which Alexandra De Pleijt (University of Oxford) will present her paper "Two Worlds of Female Labour: Gender Wage Inequality in Western Europe, 1300-1800" (written together with Jan-Luiten van Zanden).
Abstract: One of the possible explanations for the particular pre-industrial growth of regions such as Holland and England is the “European Marriage Pattern” (EMP). A central part of the hypothesis stresses the importance of wage labour by women: in order to bring about the favourable conditions of the EMP, women should have had access to the labour market and have earned a decent wage. This may translate itself in a smaller gender wage gap and the possibility that women earn their own living and have the option to remain single. But so far little is known about how much women earned in the past. In this paper we therefore provide evidence on the wages of unskilled women for six European countries between 1300 and 1800. Our evidence shows that there were two worlds of female labour. In the South of Europe the gender wage gap was relatively high. In the Northern and Western parts of Europe the gap was much smaller confirming why the EMP emerged in this particular region of the world.
Keywords: Living standards, labour market, gender inequality, pre-industrial development
JEL codes: N13, N33, J16.
The seminar will start at 15h00 at the Posthumus Room.
The seminar is open to the public, but with regard to accommodation, we would like you to register with Jacqueline Rutte, jacqueline.rutte [at] bb.huc.knaw.nl.
For more information, keep an eye on https://socialhistory.org/en/events