Report CG2 21 August 2009 for Geneva Conference, session 1
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COST Action A34
“GENDER AND WELL-BEING:
INTERACTION BETWEEN WORK, FAMILY AND PUBLIC POLICIES”
Main Report on Core Group 2 Scientific activities
June 2005-June 2009
Scientific activities of Core Group 2/CG2 began in June 2005 at Brussels (after the kick
off meeting), where the group met and planned a programme up to June 2009. Regular
scientific meetings were organised in Paris, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences
Sociales/ EHESS, in Finland (24 August 2006, The Finnish Institute of Occupational
Health, Helsinki) and at the occasion of larger network meetings (as European Social
Science History Conference/ESSHC, March 2006, in RAI Conference Centre,
Amsterdam (Netherlands), Lisbon, March 2008; Utrecht, WEHC 6 August 2009, and
others).1
The main activity was an international conference on The Transmission of Well-being:
Marriage Strategies and Inheritance Systems in Europe (17th-20th Centuries) held
25-28 April 2007 at the University of Minho, Portugal, as 2nd Symposium of COST
Action A34.
This event was held in conjunction with an ESTER (European graduate School for
Training in Economic and social historical Research) advanced research seminar for
PhD students on “Transmission of inequality between the generations in Europe, 16th20th centuries”.
Issues and purpose of the Minho Conference (2nd Symposium, April 2007)
Individual and family well-being has always been pre-conditioned on access to
adequate material resources. In traditional agrarian societies, this meant access to land
(owned, leased or held in customary tenure). In urban environments, landed property
mattered less than skill mastery. In societies were poverty was extremely widespread, as
was the case with most pre-industrial ones, the distribution of resources within and
between families was a key element of well-being: access to property and occupations
were in large part dependent on intergenerational transfers. The two key elements in
social reproduction in pre-industrial societies were thus marriage – the creation of new
families – and inheritance and decisions concerning the choice of a spouse or the
devolution of property were usually not left to the individuals concerned to decide as they
saw fit. Family obligations, socio-cultural norms, and legal systems impinged on the
individual’s agency in those respects. Access to property, education and jobs also varied
across space, and depended on the regional or even local mix of resources. The economic
1
For details, see regular Minutes of CG2 meetings and working groups activities registered by the
SECRETARIAT OF COST ACTION A-34 and
http://www.ub.edu/tig/GWBNet/docs/ActionA34%20Third%20Annual%20Progress%20Report%202008.p
df
Report CG2 21 August 2009 for Geneva Conference, session 1
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transformation of the eighteenth and nineteenth century should have affected the
importance of inherited property, skills and social capital in achieving well-being.
Available material resources, access to education and to occupations widened as a
consequence of industrialization and the spread of capitalism. One can expect families –
and societies – to have adjusted to those changes. The importance of inherited resources
in defining individual or family life chances may therefore be assumed to have been time
as well as place bound.
Families were normally the basic social unit in pre-industrial societies. In addition,
those societies were not equalitarian, but discriminated on the basis of rank, age, sex and
marital status. The “family” was not an undifferentiated group either but one that was
internally stratified along those lines. One cannot assume that all individual members of a
family share equally in its well-being, irrespective of age, sex or marital status.
More particularly, gender notions derived from classical antiquity as well as
developed by Christian theologians viewed women as imperfect males and potential
agents of disorder. Individualism is largely a nineteenth century development, and
women did not gain full legal equality until the twentieth century. One can then ask how
gender affected individual life chances, and more specifically, women’s opportunities to
marry and to inherit, as well as their agency.
The overarching goal of the conference was therefore to uncover the gendered
dimension of marriage and inheritance strategies in Europe between the seventeenth and
the twentieth century and their impact on the transmission of well-being. How important
were inherited resources in defining life chances? How did family strategies, especially
marriage and inheritance, promote or impede women’s well-being? Did intergenerational
transfers of property correct or aggravate gender differences in well-being, or were they
neutral?
The conference consisted in 38 papers organized in eight panels (Methods;
Quantitative approaches to well-being in peasant societies; Well-being along the life
course and social differentiation; Well-being outside marriage; Choosing a spouse, and
the limits of homogamy; Family well-being, female labour, children and aging; and
finally well-being and inheritance systems). Most of the papers (28) covered the
eighteenth and nineteenth century. The geographic coverage was very broad and moved
away from the usual emphasis on the Anglo-French-German world: nine papers looked at
Spain and Portugal, eight at eastern Europe and five at Scandinavia for instance, thus
broadening significantly our knowledge of family strategies in past time.
Approaches and methods
Such a variety creates methodological challenges. How can we be sure we compare
similar socio-economic categories over time and place? One solution, discussed by the
papers in the first panel, is to use occupation as a proxy for social class, which in turn, is
deemed to have been a key determinant of well-being. Panellists advocated the use of
HISCO, a common occupation code, which is also linked to ISCO, the coding scheme
used by European statistical agencies, from which is derived HISCLASS – a system of
social classification. However, as several of the empirically based papers made clear,
there are still problems with those classifications. As they stood at the time of the
conference, HISCO and HISCLASS were particularly ill-adapted to describing past farm
communities as they did not distinguish between owners and tenant farmers, nor between
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large, market oriented farms relying on hired labour and subsistence units worked by a
family.
Members of other panels also noted that the meaning of occupational titles can differ
across regions and periods. The classification scheme in short needed fine tuning.
Findings
The papers presented at the Minho Conference lead to the following overall
conclusions:
 Access to property, education and employment were fundamental
elements of individual and family well being across time and place.
 Till the later part of the nineteenth century, such access was usually
dependent on intergenerational transfers of material resources, skills,
cultural resources and social capital.
 Access could be enhanced by marriage strategies (marriage gave spouses
access to additional material or symbolic resources)
 But access could also be curtailed by parental strategies to keep the family
property intact, and this curtailment fell disproportionately on women.
 Access to property, education and employment was gendered in ways that
were almost always detrimental to women; they also sometimes
discriminated against some of the potential male heirs (single heir
systems)
The focus on family marriage and inheritance strategies should not obscure the fact a
fair number of people lived their lives outside traditional families: this was the case of
women who never married, unwed mothers, children born out of wedlock, as some of the
papers showed. The conditions of those “irregulars” varied enormously in time and place.
However, family strategies usually had a negative impact on those women and their
children (bastards for instance could not inherit). By the nineteenth century, the State
often intervened to protect the well-being of at least the children born of irregular unions.
On the other hand, non traditional families (cohabitations, children born out of wedlock)
could be women’s response to particularly difficult economic conditions, as when men
migrated in large numbers, and their only way to have children who could support them
in old age. Those papers also showed the limitation of material wealth to achieve wellbeing. Improving the material conditions of illegitimate children and their mothers for
instance did not necessarily improve their social standing.
The panellists also uncovered the centrality of work for the well-being of the great
majority of men and women who did not live off their means, despite the importance
played by inherited assets. Kinds of work, level of remuneration, the physical, social and
cultural conditions of work are and were of fundamental importance to well-being; they
also reflected gender norms which disadvantaged women. In pre-industrial societies
females were less likely than males to enter the labour market, and the range of
occupations open to them was more limited. Parents were more likely to invest in a boy’s
education or training, as he was expected to work in adulthood and support a family and
possibly his aging parents. Over time one would expect the position of women in the
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labour market to have improved (more jobs, a wider range of jobs and access to better
paying ones). Yet, old norms proved remarkably resilient (as in the case of unwed
mothers and illegitimate children).
Two last conclusions particularly pertinent for policy recommendation emerge from
several papers. The first one is that State intervention may be necessary for the
improvement of material conditions over time, but legislative changes on their own are
not necessarily sufficient to improve well-being, because material conditions and
economic advancement are only one component of individual well-being. Well-being
also stems from emotional, psychological and symbolic factors, which are much more
difficult to change from above, especially if the changes go against existing cultural
norms. Moreover, well-being is influenced not only by the individual's position in
society, but also by his/her position within the immediate and the wider family; yet, intrafamily dynamics are much harder to modify from the outside. We must not forget that in
rural Europe, sometimes as late as the middle of the twentieth century, the well-being of
the individual members of the family was often considered secondary to the well-being of
group as a whole.
Families and social groups may be resistant to changes brought by the state. On the
other hand, existing legal systems often reflects past preoccupations and are very slow to
adapt to new needs. Hence they may create new injustices which inhibit well-being. One
example of such a problem are the respective rights of each of the parents of a child born
out of wedlock. What are the parental rights of the child's father, that is, his power to act
as a parent, in a society where broken relationships and the separation of parents who
have lived together without being married are very frequent, and where the child is nearly
always attributed to the mother?
Outcomes
The conference has lead to the publication of a collective volume by Peter Lang,
European publisher (Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Oxford,
Wien, 2009, 525 p.), entitled The Transmission of Well-Being, Gendered Marriage
Strategies and Inheritance Systems in Europe (17th-20th Centuries) and edited by
Margarida Durães, Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux, Llorenç Ferrer Alòs and Jan Kok (2009).
The editors choose to narrow the focus of the conference in their selection of papers in
order to facilitate comparisons across time and place. They address the following issues
(each one corresponds to a section of the book), which are all expected to reveal the
impact of family rules on female well-being.
The eighteen papers selected for this volume address the role of the family for
providing well-being in the past from four perspectives: marriage strategies, transmission
of property, well-being outside of marriage, and the questions of female headship,
widowhood and old age. They answer the following questions:
 What did women’s position within marriage and family systems imply for
their relative well-being, and for their capability to sustain themselves in
widowhood, to manage property, and to run their own household?
 How did women manage to bend the rules to their advantage? What room
was there to develop strategies to improve their position?
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Finally, how did the introduction of the Code Civil, 1804 in France and
various family laws elsewhere in 19th century European nations change
the “rules of the game”? Did people bend the rules to preserve the
underlying family formation structures or do we perceive real shifts in the
structures?
In the rural societies of historical Europe, the well-being, even survival, of many families
depended on their access to viable landholding. Preserving this access for future
generations was a prime concern. For craft families that produced market commodities,
the skills and tools of their craft were an equally important patrimony to develop and pass
on to provide for the well-being of future generations. Wage work, which was usually
seasonal and casual, was not considered a desirable basis to provide for the well-being of
a family and all its members. The methods for preserving the family patrimony and
passing it on to the next generation, or not, were shaped by ecological, political, social
and legal constraints and economic opportunity as the family balanced the individual
ambitions of its members with the need to provide adequate well-being to the whole.
Depending upon these constraints and the regional economy’s degree of
commercialization, the transmission of the family property to the next generation could
be relatively equal or unequal. Equalitarian inheritance could potentially divide assets to
the point that the individual shares would not be sufficient to support the well-being of
each heir. Non-equalitarian inheritance also meant non-inheriting children were
potentially dependent upon the heir for their well-being and had less freedom or support
for their own ambitions. Whether equal or unequal, the challenge was to find the best
way to provide well-being for all.
In this setting, marriage performed a specific function. Parental strategies surrounding
the marriage of children were designed to counteract the division of property. For this
reason, marriage between kin or “exchange marriages” were common in several parts of
Europe. Sometimes children were kept from marrying at all. However, children could
also use their share of the family patrimony to exploit opportunities elsewhere, marry
someone of higher status and gain more “well-being” than successors to management of
the family property who were often burdened with the care of parents and unmarried
siblings.
Some societies saw marriage as a process that began with a period of cohabitation.
When this process was interrupted by mortality or migration, cohabitation could result in
illegitimate births. In others, cohabitation was plainly an alternative to marriage. In the
Western past, illegitimacy was often a gender strategy for the survival and continued
well-being of family and community rather than sexual anti-conformism. In the context
of proletarianization and in the absence of strong family support for single mothers,
determination of paternity was a key issue for securing the well-being of mothers and
children.
In the past, inheritance systems usually shut out illegitimate children. Cultural norms,
and legal systems, determined what right to support, if any, illegitimate children and their
mothers enjoyed. Their well being was therefore precarious. Presently, in Europe, new
inquiries such as those of the Hague Conference on Private International Law or new
legislations like, in France, Pacte Civil de Solidarité/PACS open new alternatives,
offering more protection to non married couples (90 percent heterosexual). But, even
recognized by their unmarried – often “pacsed” – parents, children are still legally
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considered as illegitimate. In 2007, this situation concerned half of the births in France
and, in today’s Europe, extra-marital births account for an increasing share of total births
(globally a third), reflecting the growing frequency of extra-marital cohabitation. The
“Gender and Well-Being” project results enlighten a massive and specific phenomenon
of our time.
Well-being can be defined as the ability to be protected against poverty. The studies in
this “Minho volume” provide many examples of marriage strategies that limit the risk of
property fragmentation that would endanger entire communities. These strategies serve
the well-being of the group. However, well-being can also be seen as the ability of adults
to make autonomous decisions regarding their own lives. Then, of course, position in the
sibling order or illegitimacy could severely limit individual strategies. Conflicts about the
choice of partner or the dowry were rampant. So, one could try to change the path laid
out by the parents. Several authors describe flexibility within marriage and inheritance
systems, but also suggest that men had more opportunity to bend the rules and were less
likely than women to be penalized for doing so.
For working women who could not find a suitable partner, perhaps because they were
too poor or most males of their generation had emigrated, having a child was a way to
ensure old age security. Some of the authors in this book studied the type of work and
living conditions open to single women who had no spouse or life companion. Others
recorded the influence of family structures and networks as well as the slow building of
mutual aid and assistance systems, of retirement and social security benefits, particularly
in Northern Europe. Comparisons with historical Japan were also presented: in general,
the best way for men and women to ensure good care in old age was to marry and rely on
family members for regular support. Having children was fundamental. When care of the
older generation and sick and disabled family members was the responsibility of a single
heir, strategies for replacing a missing heir were a key question of both inheritance and
marriage. Gender inequalities facing remarriage were stressed and it was clear that urban
societies in preindustrial Europe were places where people living alone were numerous
and in need, particularly women and migrants.
In the past, the predominance of the family economy, whether in agriculture,
commercial activities or wage work, meant that the family was the main provider of
resources, through its internal mechanisms of redistribution as well as through its
intergenerational transfers. In this book, family rules and flexible departures from them
regarding inclusion and exclusion, family mechanisms of redistribution and transfers of
resources, and family care arrangements for children, singles and elderly have been
analyzed and compared in their regional variations. In the end, the family was the first
source for gaining well-being and the final safety net for maintaining the security and
well-being of all its members. Any study of gender and well-being in the past must
consider both how families provided for the well-being of their members and how this
security was passed to the next generation to provide the basis for their security in the
future.
The volume has used the concept of family systems as a heuristic device for
comparative research into gender differences in access to and control of resources, into
the relative security offered by marriage, and into systems of old age care. The strength
of parental control over adult children varies between family systems and thus, to a
certain extent, in the opportunity of individuals to pursue their own goals and strategies to
attain well-being. Finally, family systems differ strongly in the ways illegitimacy was
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accepted, notwithstanding prohibitive religious rules and legal systems. Thus, they reflect
value systems that can still account for the remarkable variation in cohabitation and births
outside marriage in contemporary Europe.
Although the concept of family systems has proven fruitful, more work is needed to
explore whether and how they also affect relations between the sexes and the generations
in urban contexts, in propertyless families, and in the emerging middle classes. From this
perspective, the period between the late nineteenth century and the middle of the
twentieth century needs further exploration. In particular it remains to be seen to what
extent family patterns in Eastern Europe, reflect continuation with the past.
Marco H.D. van Leeuwen, co-organizer of the parallel “ESTER” advanced seminar of
the European graduate School of Training in Economic and social economic Research,
dedicated to “Transmission of inequality between the generations in Europe, 16 th20th centuries”, selected five papers among the papers presented in the first session of
the Minho Symposium, which he edited for the European journal Continuity and Change
(Cambridge Press). This choice was accepted and published as special issue, 2009,
volume 23, number 3.