Breadwinner, bread maker. Gender division of labor and intrahousehold inequality in 1930s rural Italy

Giulia Mancini

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper offers a quantitative description of gender segregation in productive roles, and of its consequences on basic dimensions of women’s and girls’ wellbeing, among rural households in interwar Italy. It uses microdata assembled from a collection of family monographs, which recount the lives, work, and consumption behavior of more than 800 men and women. It finds that, despite the emphasis put by the qualitative literature on non-stereotypical examples of female work, a rigid gender-based division of labor was the rule. An investigation of household nutrition and expenditures does not offer definitive proof of gender bias in intrahousehold resource allocation, in spite of anecdotal evidence. Nevertheless, women commanded a lower share of total household income, while putting in as many or more working hours than men.

Keywords: gender; intrahousehold inequality; agriculture; Italy; interwar; Fascism. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 J16 N30 N50 Q12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-06-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/102142/1/MPRA_paper_102142.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:102142

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().