What is Work? Gender at the Crossroads of Home, Family, and Business from the Early Modern Era to the Present

398 Pages·2018·5.327 MB·English

by  Raffaella Sarti, Anna Bellavitis, Manuela Martini

What Is Work?
Gender at the Crossroads
of Home, Family, and Business
from the Early Modern Era to the Present
International Studies in Social History
General Editor: Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History,
Amsterdam
Published in Association with the International Institute of Social History,
Amsterdam
Published under the auspices of the International Institute of Social History, Am-
sterdam, this series offers transnational perspectives on labor and working-class his-
tory. For a long time, labor historians have been working within national interpretive
frameworks. But interest in studies contrasting different national and regional experi-
ences and studying cross-border interactions has been increasing in recent years. This
series is designed to act as a forum for these new approaches.
For a full series listing, please see back matter.
W I W ?
HAT S ORK
Gender at the Crossroads
of Home, Family, and Business
from the Early Modern Era to the Present
Edited by
Raffaella Sarti, Anna Bellavitis, and Manuela Martini
berghahn
N E W Y O R K (cid:129) O X F O R D
www.berghahnbooks.com
First published in 2018 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
© 2018 Raffaella Sarti, Anna Bellavitis, Manuela Martini
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78533-911-0 hardback
ISBN 978-1-78533-912-7 ebook
C
ONTENTS
List of Figures and Tables vii
Introduction
What Is Work? Gender at the Crossroads of Home, Family,
and Business from the Early Modern Era to the Present 1
Raffaella Sarti, Anna Bellavitis, and Manuela Martini
I. SETTING THE SCENE: THE FEMINIST CHALLENGES
TO THE “DELABORIZATION” OF HOUSEHOLD WORK 85
1 Family Work: A Policy-Relevant Intellectual History 89
Nancy Folbre
2 Productive and Reproductive Work: Uses and Abuses of
an Old Dichotomy 114
Alessandra Pescarolo
3 The Home as a Factory: Rethinking the Debate on
Housewives’ Wages in Italy, 1929–1980 139
Alessandra Gissi
II. THE CUNNING HISTORIAN: UNVEILING AND
OVERCOMING THE GENDER BIAS OF SOURCES 161
4 The Statistical Construction of Women’s Work and the
Male Breadwinner Economy in Spain (1856–1930) 165
Cristina Borderías
5 Toiling Women, Non-working Housewives, and Lesser
Citizens: Statistical and Legal Constructions of Female
Work and Citizenship in Italy 188
Raffaella Sarti
vi Contents
6 The Complexities of Work: Analyzing Men’s and Women’s
Work in the Early Modern World with the Verb-Oriented
Method 226
Maria Ågren
7 The Visibility of Women’s Work: Logics and Contexts of
Documents’ Production 243
Margareth Lanzinger
III. THE VALUE OF CARE AND UNPAID HOME-BASED
WORK: THE ROLE OF THE LAW 265
8 Regulating Home Labors: The ILO and the Feminization
of Work 269
Eileen Boris
9 Family-Relations Law between “Stratification” and
“Resistance”: Housework and Family Law Exceptionalism 295
Maria Rosaria Marella
10 Could Family (Care) Work Be Paid? From French Agricultural
Inheritance Law (1939) to Legal Recognition of Excessive
Filial Duty (1994) 326
Florence Weber
IV. CONCLUSION
Conclusion
Can We Construct a Holistic Approach to Women’s
Labor History over the Longue Durée? 349
Laura Lee Downs
Index 368
F T
igures and ables
Figures
Figure 3.1. Daniela, “Salario alle casalinghe?” (Effe, no. 3
[1974]: np). 150
Figure 3.2. Daniela, “Salario alle casalinghe?” (Effe, no. 3
[1974]: np). 151
Figure 3.3. “Salario alle casalinghe?” (Effe, no. 3 [1974]: 21). 152
Figure 3.4. Collettivo Internazionale Femminista, Le operaie
della casa (Venezia: Marsilio, 1974). Cover of the book. 153
Figure 5.1. Percentages of housewives and economically active
women among women, Italy, 1861–2011. Sources: Italian
population censuses, 1861–2011 (original census data). 199
Figure 5.2. Percentage of women in the Italian male and
female active population, 1881–1961. Source: Ornello
Vitali, Aspetti dello sviluppo economico italiano alla luce della
ricostruzione della popolazione attiva (Roma: Failli, 1970). 201
Figure 5.3. Percentage of economically active women among
women and percentage of domestic workers among
economically active women, Italy, 1861–2001.
Sources: Italian population censuses, 1861–2011
(original census data). 205
Tables
Table 4.1. Categories and classification of (unpaid) domestic
work in the national population censuses. Sources: Spanish
national censuses. 174
viii Figures and Tables
Table 5.1. Classifi cation of women whom we would defi ne as
“housewives” in the Italian population censuses. Sources:
Italian population censuses, 1861–2011. 194
Table 6.1. All work activities grouped according to category
and gender, Sweden 1550–1799 (absolute numbers).
Source: Maria Ågren ed., Making a Living, Making a
Difference: Gender and Work in Early Modern European
Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 30. 230
INTRODUCTION
W I W ?
HAT S ORK
Gender at the Crossroads of Home, Family, and
Business from the Early Modern Era to the Present
Raffaella Sarti, Anna Bellavitis, and Manuela Martini
1. What is work? A fresh perspective
from the (alleged) margins
What is work? The question chosen as a title for this volume is an ambi-
tious one. We are obviously aware that a huge body of literature on work
exists, and we certainly do not pretend we can give a defi nite answer to
the question,1 which may not even be possible.2 Instead, we will use this
question as a tool to interrogate history, the social sciences, and also pol-
itics. Such a question prompts us in fact to adopt a critical and diversifi ed
view of work and, consequently, of economic and social policies, too. On
the other hand, establishing the boundaries, implications, and stakes of
a new characterization of work is a crucial issue in the contemporary de-
bate, and is obviously also motivated by the ongoing dramatic economic,
technological, organizational, social, and cultural changes affecting the
world of work.
Let us start with a telling example. “Italy is a Democratic Republic,
founded on work,” article 1 of the Italian Constitution, written after
the Second World War and enforced in 1948, authoritatively states3: this
implied and still implies a kind of overlap between enjoying citizenship
and working. When the Italian Constitution was enforced, according to
the Italian population censuses as many as three-quarters of adult Italian
women were not working or, more precisely, were economically “inac-
tive.” What did they do? About 60 percent of them were housewives: