The persistent workforce: female day labour on capitalist farms in eighteenth-century Flanders

Abstract

Abstract Female day labourers regularly appear in the accounts of capitalist Flemish farmers throughout the eighteenth century. Their persistent employment challenges the dominant view that female day labour was marginalised in areas of agrarian capitalism across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The hitherto unexplored accounts of nine capitalist farms reveal the seasonal employment patterns, sexual division of labour and wages of those female day labourers in Flanders. While spring weeding was an important source of employment, women also continued to be hired during the harvest and for the cultivation of labour-intensive crops. Throughout the century, female day wages amounted to 0.4–0.73 of male wages. Women were excluded from well-paid tasks, but equal rates for equal work do not suggest wage discrimination in the strictest sense. The Flemish accounts thus reinforce the idea that female day labour persisted in areas with labour-intensive agriculture and alternative employment opportunities.