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SUMMARY:Ellen McArthur Lecture: Eve Also Delved: Gendering Economic Histor
 y (1) - Professor Jane Humphries (Oxford)
DTSTART:20160223T170000Z
DTEND:20160223T190000Z
UID:TALK63132@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:31344
DESCRIPTION:*1. Women\, work and wages: from the Black Death to the indust
 rial revolution*\n\nLecture 1 builds on earlier work (with Jacob Weisdorf 
 (2015)) in using historical evidence on women’s wages as a lens through 
 which to view their economic activities and position in society.  We have 
 linked material provided by other historians to the fragmentary evidence f
 rom diverse primary sources on women’s wages to provide an account of wo
 men’s wages from the Black Death to the Industrial Revolution.  These es
 timates can be compared with various widely accepted series of men’s wag
 es over the same time period in a historic account of the evolution of the
  gender gap in pay.  Not only does this cast new light on debates about th
 e power of capitalist development to fracture patriarchal continuities\, i
 t also challenges two recent mainstream themes in economic history.  The f
 irst challenge is to the idea of a girl-powered boost to economic growth f
 ollowing the Black Death.  Both De Moor and van Zanden (2010) and Voitlän
 der and Voth (2013) have argued that the restructuring of agrarian product
 ion in response to demographic contraction by enhancing the relative remun
 eration of women workers promoted delayed marriage and reduced Malthusian 
 pressures enabling increased investment\, especially investment in human c
 apital.  The empirical record appears out of synch with this interpretatio
 n and forces new ways of thinking about the 15th century reaction.  The se
 cond challenge is to the now dominant interpretation of the British indust
 rial revolution as originating in a ‘high wage economy’. In this inter
 pretation the high cost of labour relative to capital and fuel incentivise
 d innovation and the adoption of the new techniques elevating Britain onto
  a higher growth trajectory inaccessible to competitors in Europe and Asia
 .  Recently women and children have been explicitly included in this high 
 wage economy albeit with minimal empirical evidence available in support. 
  The lecture will explore whether the early modern and modern evidence on 
 women’s wages is consistent with the HWE.
LOCATION:LG18\, Faculty of Law\, Sidgwick Site\, 10 West Rd\, Cambridge\, 
 CB3 9DZ
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